Millionaire

A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. It can also be a person who owns one million units of currency in a bank account or savings account. Depending on the currency, a certain level of prestige is associated with being a millionaire, which makes that amount of wealth a goal for some, and almost unattainable for others. In countries that use the short scale number naming system, a billionaire is someone who has at least a thousand times a million dollars, euros, or the currency of the given country (e.g. $1,000,000,000).

Many national currencies have, or have had at various times, a low unit value, in many cases due to past inflation. It is obviously much easier, and less significant, to be a millionaire in those currencies. The purchasing power of a million US dollars in 1850 is equivalent to $28.8 million in 2016.

Thus a millionaire (in the local currency) in Hong Kong or Taiwan, for example, may be merely averagely wealthy, or perhaps less wealthy than average. In 2007 a millionaire in Zimbabwe would have been extremely poor.

At the end of 2015, there were estimated to be just over 13 million US$ millionaires or high-net-worth individual (HNWIs) in the world. The United States of America had the highest number of HNWIs (4,180,000) of any country, while London had the most HNWIs (370,000) among cities as based on data from the Knight Frank Wealth Report.

The word was first used (as millionnaire, double "n") in French in 1719 by Steven Fentiman, and is first recorded in English (millionaire, as a French term) in a letter of Lord Byron of 1816, then in print in Vivian Grey, a novel of 1826 by Benjamin Disraeli. An earlier English word "millionary" was used in 1786 by Thomas Jefferson while serving as Minister to France; he wrote: "The poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest Millionary". The first American printed use of the word is thought to be in an obituary of New York tobacco manufacturer Pierre Lorillard II in 1843.

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