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Big [Endian] is where you send/store the number 0x01020304 as "01 02 03 04".  This was traditionally used for larger machines, and since larger machines had network connectivity, NetworkByteOrder has been traditionally BigEndian.

Big and Little Endian are a reference to the book "Gullivers Travels", where a tribe of tiny people divide themselves into two factions over which end they should cut their eggs open at - the big end, or the little end.

English and most European languages are traditionally BigEndian: we write numbers "1234" when we mean "one thousand, two hundred and thirty four". By contrast, Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are LittleEndian -- despite the fact that the digits are written in the same order -- because those languages are read right-to-left. So "1234" in Arabic is STILL "one thousand, two hundred and thirty four", it's just read out in reverse order.

Funny phenomena in different everyday's languages:
* "twenty-one" in English is BigEndian.
* "einundzwanzig" in German means "one-and-twenty" and is LittleEndian.
* However, this German phenomenon holds only for tens and ones, not for hundreds: "dreihunderteinundzwanzig" means "three-hundred-and-one-and-twenty" and mixes both Endians!!
* the French word for "eighty" is "quatre-vingt", which literally means "4 twenty".


What is "little endian" and "big endian" in computer CPUs? See [Endian].


Compare LittleEndian.

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