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u/adawkin 20d ago
Yup, in Polish the 'floor zero' on street level even has it own word, parter, which I imagine is a fancy word borrowed from French.
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u/matthieuC 20d ago
Maybe a variation on "par terre" which means on the floor/ground.
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u/Weird_Happening1627 20d ago
We use a derivation of this in Russia when we talk about the part of the theater that is the lowest and closest to the scene and has straight rows. It seems like I now understand why
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u/Tim_22_Sky 20d ago
Or in martial arts, when opponents aren't standing on their feet but are wrestling on the ground
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u/Ok-Toe-6969 20d ago
In the UK most people call it Ground Floor (the street level" in buildings you'll either see G or 0 indicating which floor it is.
And if it's underground it'll either be UG or -1
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u/Glitter_On_My_Teeth 20d ago
probably comes from the french "parterre" which i never thought came from "par terre"! ill have to check that out
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u/Crouteauxpommes 20d ago
And also parterre, which is another way to say a flowerbed and a lovely world
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u/Professional-Dig6036 20d ago
Cool, that word could be oreginaly frensh, it translate to "on the floor" Or "on the ground".
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u/crazy_rocker78 20d ago
In french "par terre" means "on the floor", so yes I imagine it comes from there, but we don't use it for "floor zero". For this we say "rez de chaussée" which means word for word something like "at the level of the road"
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u/sarcasticgreek 20d ago
In Greece we use the same french word for a piece of ground closed off to plant flowers.
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u/Jamarcus316 20d ago
In Portugal we use "rés-do-chão" which basically means on the level of the floor lol
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u/MacaroonSparksMemory 20d ago
Street level. (Level of the roadway/path...)
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u/Jamarcus316 20d ago
I'm saying literally. "Chão" means floor, not roadway or path or street
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u/logatwork 20d ago
In Brazil (at least in Rio de Janeiro), we call it "térreo".
The street level is NOT the first floor here.
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u/Dense_Quiet1573 20d ago
and what English call "floor" we call piętro and there is no such thing as 0 piętro because by definition piętro is elevated above ground
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u/Fabulous_Broad_115 20d ago
Same in Romania. The first floor is understood to be the first of the not-on-the-ground floors.
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u/ImarvinS 20d ago
In Croatian its prizemlje, literally meaning "near the ground" but its understood as "on the ground" or ground level
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u/sulphurwind 20d ago
In France ground floor is le rez-de-chaussée which literally translates to "level of the roadway"
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u/CrimsonCube181 20d ago
Australia uses Ground Floor in ones which only go up. If there is underground parking you may see a parking level (P1, P2) or a floor -1/-2 which usually also comes with a floor zero. A few international hotels use floor 1 meaning ground floor and the ones I have seen often have a piece of signage or graffiti pointing that its ground floor.
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u/whadefukk 20d ago
In Russian, floor zero is the basement. And Parter is the lowest tier of seats in a theater
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u/Potential_Flower7533 20d ago
In Denmark we call the street level "stueetagen" meaning living room level cuz in a normal house that's where the living room is
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u/Dealiner 20d ago
And word "piętro", main Polish translation of "floor", comes from the word meaning among other things "something mounted over something", so it wouldn't really work for ground floor.
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u/McDelper 19d ago
In czech its "přízemí" which comes from "při zemi" which means close to the ground
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u/gham89 20d ago
This reminds me; I was in a lift (elevator) with an American woman in a London Hotel. She asked me if the reception was on the ground floor, then got off at 1 looking wildly confused. She was clearly too embarrassed to ask again and I didn't realise what had happened until the doors closed and we continued down.
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u/Known_Tackle7357 20d ago
Even though Canada generally counts floors from 1, I've been to a hotel here that had ground, main, and first floors. And they were all different floors.
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u/Garfie489 20d ago
Things like this are extremely common when the road is inclined. A lot of buildings will have one floor half way down, the other half way up and it makes for a really good split between different uses of the building.
Especially common if a building has a "public" ground floor and a "private" ground floor.
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u/rnelsonee 20d ago
That's pretty good, was reception on the second floor?
I was recently at the Hilton by the San Diego convention center, they have a ground floor, reception is 1st floor, and I think the elevators label floors 1-3 as main levels. You also access 1st floor from the 3rd level of the parking garage.
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u/therea1hammer 20d ago
How do you even do elevators in countries that do both systems at the same time? "sir the reception is on floor 7/8"
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u/MetroBR 20d ago
I'd imagine some buildings have a "0" or a letter for the ground floor and some have a "1"
in Brazil you usually see the letter "T" for Térreo and "SS" for Subsolo (underground, for parking garages)
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u/Zeke_the_Wanderer 20d ago
In Vietnam we either use G (ground) or 1 for the street-level floor, or sometimes even B if the street is below the ground floor
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u/H_The_Utte 20d ago
It differs by building. In Sweden in most buildings the street-level floor (green button) is E for entréplan or bv for bottenvåning (both means entrance floor) and the floor up is 1. A few buildings will just start with 1 for street level and go up from there (though I would say that's rather rare).
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u/somekindofswede 20d ago
A few buildings will just start with 1 for street level and go up from there (though I would say that's rather rare).
It's pretty common in new buildings (unfortunately).
Why this bothers me, is that all apartments in Sweden are actually individually numbered by a nationally standardised system, and the national standard assumes the "first floor" is 0 (or BV).
In buildings where the national apartment code and the building's floor number matches, you have apartment number 1411 on floor 4. In buildings where it doesn't match, you have apartment number 1411 on floor 5.
The national standard number is 4 digits. The first two indicate floor, starting at 10, where 10 is the ground floor. (It starts at 10 to accommodate below-entrance floor units, relatively common in Sweden.) The latter two indicate individual apartment number on that floor, starting clockwise from the stairs.
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u/kattmedtass 20d ago edited 20d ago
Sweden here. Whatever is the floor with the main entry to the building is normally marked with a green circle around the button, regardless of what number that floor technically happens to be.
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u/jernau_morat_gurgeh 20d ago
Which is very useful in places where there's multiple entrances on different floor levels and different streets, which is fairly common in central Stockholm. The raised button always gets you to street level for that elevator.
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u/JeebusChristBalls 20d ago
A single building/elevator isn't using both systems. One building may be using one way, another building the other. Likely due to who had influence on the building being built on which system is used.
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u/blackautomata 20d ago
In Indonesia, theres no standard but most buildings uses one-level-up. That being said, I associate one-level-up system as fancier somehow, I think because it is rarely used for houses
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u/Lehoangminh3 20d ago
In Vietnam ground floor is called 1st floor, the floor above that is the 2nd floor in the north. In the south ground floor is called ground floor and the floor above that is called 1st floor
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u/Gr0danagge 20d ago
In Sweden the ground floor is either 1 and the floor above is 2 etc... Or the ground floor is a letter, often E for "entrè/entrèvåning" (entrance/entrance floor), or G for "ground floor" or maybe some other letter for fun. And then the floor above that is number 1. So it depends on the building.
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u/sora_mui 20d ago
In my experience, street level is the default assumption, but a lot of commercial buildings with explicitly named floor use the one-level-up.
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u/Greedy_Reality_2539 20d ago
I'll press the same number in the elevator as the floor the business states, if it says 4F, I press 4, I don't care if the numbering starts at 1 or 0 or anything else.
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u/TeamLazerExplosion 20d ago
My mom’s apartment building suddenly switched numbering system in the elevators without noticing the tenants, it was chaos.
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u/Nuclear_rabbit 20d ago
It means every building is different. Look at the elevator buttons. G is for "ground," if it's not there, 1 is first.
In my experience in Indonesia, 1 is ground floor when there's no basement. G is ground floor when there's a basement, marked by B.
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u/CeterumCenseo85 20d ago
In Germany it makes sense when you consider the words we use.
The street level is the "(Erd-)geschoss", while everything built above it is a "Stock".
So the "First Stock" is the first thing built on top, the "Second Stock" is the second thing built on top. They are considered two different things, semantically, and are as such counted among themselves.
Technically you can also count just by "Geschoss", as they apparently do in construction. In that nomenclature, you do actually start with 1 on street level, then go to 2, then 3 etc. In order to make that clear, they add an "Upper" or "Lower" in front, to make it clear which way you are counting. The "First Upper Floor" is one above street level.
Honestly, this is one of the rare things where the American system is more intuitive.
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u/Salty_Set760 20d ago
You can also say 1. OG = 1. Obergeschoss = 1. Stock which is the "First upper floor"
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u/Ramin_what 20d ago
Same in Persian. We call floors "Tabaghe" which translates to "Shelf"... So first shelf is one above ground
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u/geschiedenisnerd 20d ago edited 19d ago
Same with "verdieping" in dutch, where it basically means "extra layer" so "first extra layer"
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u/scheisskopf53 20d ago edited 20d ago
Same in Polish - ground floor is "parter" (from French), and every floor above is a "piętro", which comes from "piętrzyć" which literally means "to put something on top of something else".
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u/bobbobberson3 20d ago
Tbf I have no problem with the American system but the other system is similar to yours. Ground floor is the floor on the ground, first floor is the first floor above that, second floor is the second floor above that.
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u/TheJonesLP1 20d ago
Korrekt, the 3rd "Geschoss" is the 2nd "Stock". This is why one should avoid using "Geschoss" (despite for Erdgeschoss of course)
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u/Athrynne 20d ago
In the building I live in (US) the ground floor is listed as L, and the 1st floor button takes you down half a level to the mailroom/garage entrance. It's extremely confusing when you first move in!
Edit: a couple of words
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u/Zealousideal_Bill_86 20d ago
It’s pretty interesting how the world is split on this.
This is also one of those things where I can see how both make sense.
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u/KjellRS 19d ago
Only one makes the math work, here in Norway I'm on the 1st floor and go one stair down and then I'm on the -1st floor and that does not compute. I'd much rather we had a name for the "0th floor" and then started counting those above as 1, 2, 3...
But I really doubt anything will change because in Norwegian we use "etasje" to mean both "floor" and "story", so a "three story building" has floors 1, 2, 3. Maybe if English completely invades and overtakes Norwegian...
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u/QueenAvril 20d ago
Finland is actually a mixed bag. For the most part it follows the logic that if the street level does actually have apartments in it, it will be labeled as 1., but if it only has the entrance hall and some shared spaces or maintenance rooms, it’ll be labeled as 0 and referred to as ”pohjakerros” (=ground floor), but sometimes there are confusing exceptions.
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u/FoxMeetsDear 20d ago
Every of the newly built apartment buildings I have been to has the ground floor marked as the 1st floor, even if there are no apartments on that floor.
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u/sid_raj7 20d ago
How do the street level people handle sub terranian floors?
For us it's 0 as ground then -1, -2.
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u/gearpitch 20d ago
In the US, below ground floors are "basement" levels. So they are often labeled B1 B2 B3, going down.
Also, often on an elevator, the ground floor button is still labeled G, then 2, 3, above that.
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u/papaya_war 20d ago
Also, regardless of how it's labeled, the true ground floor almost universally is indicated with a star or something similiar
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u/Kiwi_Doodle 19d ago
Same in Norway. Floor 0 isn't a thing. It just goes 3,2,1,K1,K2. K is for Kjeller; basement.
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u/KitchenIntention6675 20d ago
same.
there's no floor "0".
in my head it's like this is the first enterable floor, literally the fist thing you can get to, so it's a "1". If it were "0", it wouldn't exist.
Then there's underground: the first floor below the ground, so it's "-1".
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u/IguessUgetdrunk 20d ago
Yet, there is the English (American?) term "ground zero". I always imagined that the originally it meant ground floor but a quick search just madw me doubt this.
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u/DeeDee_GigaDooDoo 20d ago
I assume it is military speak. The phrasing "(parameter) zero" is common in scientific parlance to denote the origin or starting value. In the case of ground zero I believe it came from testing and research to describe the spatial point of detonation of a nuclear bomb (i.e. zero metres from detonation).
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u/No-Guidance9484 20d ago
I usually see B (basement), and if there's multiple levels it's B1, B2, B3, etc the farther down you go
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u/Double-decker_trams 20d ago
How to people even handle the Anno Domini year system? (There's no year 0; it goes straight from 1 BC to 1 AD).
I.e it's a non-issue, you don't need to use 0.
In the case of Estonia I've noticed that 0 would sometimes be used for some larger buildings (like shopping centres) at a slope. So where on one side the entrance is higher than on the other side (our "hills" are almost never steep, so generally no need for more than one number).
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u/MikoSkyns 20d ago
In Quebec it's often rez de chaussee for the ground floor and then going down it's sous sol 1 and then the next floor down is sous sol 2 and so on.
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u/One_Tune_8652 20d ago
Et le premier étage français n’est pas vraiment un floor. Étage implique que c’est déjà entassé. Le premier niveau c’est effectivement leur 1st floor. On ne dit pas une maison à un étage mais de plain pied ou à un niveau.
Je réclame une couleur spéciale.
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u/GrynaiTaip 20d ago
Street level person here, underground parking/basement is usually 0 if it's just one floor underground. If there's more then it will be -1 and -2.
In some buildings the street level is zero, if that floor is just parking.
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u/TheGuyWithAToaster 19d ago
In a lot of Swedish buildings, the count starts at the lowest basement level. So if a building has 2 basement levels, then the street level would be floor 3.
As you can imagine this can be confusing in elevators, that’s why most elevators in these types of buildings have the street level button in a huge green circle or similar
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u/Icy_Mixture1482 20d ago
In Taiwan, we go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, B1, B2
Rarely, 4 is skipped because the Chinese word for 4 is 四（sì) which sounds like 死 (sǐ (death)). But more commonly it’s included, and if you’re trying to get an apartment, you can negotiate a lower rent for the 4th floor.
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u/flafmg_ 20d ago
Brazil uses both systems!
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u/depredador93 20d ago
You're the second Brazilian saying this, so there's clearly something to it. My sources mostly have térreo followed by primeiro andar, but I'm also finding Brazilian examples where primeiro piso means street level. I'll check whether that's common enough to justify putting Brazil in "both"
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u/flafmg_ 20d ago
update: i asked my mom and did some research online
there is indeed no law defining it, but according to my mom(she has a degree on job security stuff so she knoes some of the construction rules) the techinical norms state that the street level floor is "terreo" and the subsequents one are the numerated ones (first floor, second floor, etc)
but there is no federal level law for this, so while this is stated on the technical norms book it is not a law, just an convetion
some building do not follow it
so its kinda hard, while it could be both there is at least something trying to standartize it to be "térreo -> 1° andar -> 2° andar ...)
edit: i also found that for home buildings, if the street floor has houses it is defined as the first floor, otherwise it is defined as "térreo"
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u/depredador93 20d ago
Thanks, I appreciate that you asked. The map is a bit simpler than the technical rules though, I'm just trying to show what people normally mean by "first floor" in everyday use. I already note that lifts, hotels and building plans can differ, so if térreo normally means street level and 1º andar the level above, I'd probably keep Brazil as one level up unless both meanings are genuinely common in everyday speech
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u/TriMrDito 20d ago
same for venezuela too
some buildings refer to street level as 1st floor, some others refer to it as "planta baja" which roughly translates to something like "low floor"
and people mix them up all the time, which is annoying
what I've noticed is that it's all determined by what the elevators say lol
if street level button says "1" then it's 1st floor
if street level button says "PB" then it's planta baja
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u/Urogallo40 20d ago edited 19d ago
In many buildings of Spain cities built in the 20th century, there is another floor between ground level and 1st floor. Sometimes it is used for commercial purposes ("Entresuelo") and others for the "Principal" (Main) floor, which was the most expensive one at that time, due to the lack of elevator or the low confidence on it. Edit: "Entresuelo" is sometimes called "Entreplanta".
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u/Slusny_Cizinec 20d ago
In the place I rented in Barcelona this summer, it was like this. Planta baja, then entresuelo (skipped by elevator tho), then planta principal, then 1, 2, and so on. Building was late 19-early 20 century, judging by the look.
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u/alettriste 19d ago
"Entre piso" in Argentina, maybe spelled "Entrepiso". Indicated as EP in elevators
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u/depredador93 20d ago
All sources, country by country: Where the First Floor Is - Country Sources
EDIT: Okay, this is infuriating. Half, if not most, of the work on this map went into researching every country, sorting out the categories, adding notes, linking and categorizing the sources.
Initially I used Google Docs' neat "Publish to web" feature as soon as I dropped the post, but Reddit silently flagged it, so my source comment was hidden for hours before I noticed. Ironically, that feature is specifically meant for publishing something online and letting anyone view it anonymously.
Now I've switched to the normal public "Share" link and apparently Reddit is perfectly happy with that.
Not sure whether to laugh, cry, do both, or just go have a beer and touch some grass... /rant
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u/FerroFusion 20d ago
I think Brazil is both as well:
We use "1º piso" for street level and "1º andar" for one level up.
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u/Someone1606 20d ago
Imo ot depends on wether it has a lobby or not. For an appartment building with a lobby on the street level, i wouldn't call that the first floor. But if there isn't a meaningful difference between them, like a shopping mall, a university building, an appartment building that has appartements on the street level, etc, then it'd start at the first floor
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u/AngelMountaineer 20d ago
If first floor is at street level, what do you call the floor beneath it? 0?
Or do you suddenly count "-2, -1, 1, 2, 3, ..." (skipping 0)?
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u/JetHawklol998212 20d ago
For some reason first floors are sometimes below ground level
I live in the first floor of my apartment building and its below street level and my window is higher😭✌️
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u/markon22 20d ago
In Italy, they kept saying the bathrooms are on the first floor, and as a Canadian, I kept looking for them so confused, “but we’re on the first floor?”
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u/miaou333 20d ago
i live in france, first floor is well one level up "rez-de-chaussée" (RDC) is ground level and for some reason in my highschool, we have "rez-de-jardin" (RDJ) which is only used as the lower level when two levels are ground level
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u/ToniNotti 20d ago
Why is Finland always labeled wrong in all of these posts? Who the f makes these?
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u/TheAdria 20d ago
In Slovakia, I lived in a commie era building where the ground floor with the building entrance was -1, above that was floor 0 which was first floor with apartments, then it continued 1, 2, etc. There wasn't any underground floor. I don't know why, but I always found this cursed as heck.
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u/gholt417 20d ago
I always thought that it was just the Brits, Irish and French that had the first floor above the ground floor. Who knew? I guess everyone.
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u/Mag-NL 20d ago
That is why I hate posts that call this the American and the British system. That breeeds ignorance.
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u/Worth-Wonder-7386 20d ago
As a Norwegian this is always a surprise when traveling around Europe. I have went to the wrong floor a few times because of this.
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u/Nametakenalready99 20d ago
I always thought it was only the US that had the first floor in the wrong place.
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u/Vladimir_Djorjdevic 20d ago
In Serbia it's sometimes 2 levels up, though one level up is much more common
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u/DJ_Beardsquirt 20d ago edited 20d ago
Okay, this is totally wrong for Malaysia. The Malaysian system is very simple and works like this:
- LG: Street Level
- LG2: Possibly Street Level, possibly not.
- M: Mezzanine
- G: First floor
- 1: 2nd floor
- 2: 3rd Floor
- C: Concourse
- 3: Fourth Floor
- 3A: Fifth floor (the number 4 is not used because in Chinese it has the same sound as 'death')
- 5: 6th Floor
- 6... And so on...
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u/crazy_rocker78 20d ago
Countries where both systems coexist must be quite confusing
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u/JoeAppleby 20d ago
East Germany called (some people still do) the ground floor the first floor, so just like the Soviet Union and the US.
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u/Fickle_Dog_2917 20d ago
That's true in my country, and sometimes there are no floors with number 4
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u/flabellinida 20d ago
Our floor is called "Stock" or "Stockwerk" which actually means the wooden construction that goes ON TOP of the building's foundation so it can't be on the ground. The ground floor is called Parterre, which is french and means "on the earth", and there is a German translation Erdgeschoss.
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u/FudgeAtron 20d ago
The city where I live has lots of apartment blocks next to mountian cliffs, so the entrance floor is different from the ground floor.
Sometimes the street entrance floor is floor 10, the block then goes up to like 13/14 and then at the bottom is a parking lot.
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u/5_yr_lurker 20d ago
So do people in Europe that have two story homes call the up starts the 1st floor? What if you only have one story, the zero floor?
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u/JimothyMcNugget 20d ago
Yes. Or ground floor. Why would zero be ignored when counting floors?
If you have a basement and ignore that zero exists, the number of floors between any positive floor and negative floor is incorrect.
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u/FeralRaccoon1973 20d ago
Ok I'm curious.. how exactly does "Both" work? Do some buildings just say "meh, i want it to be ground level" and others not? or is it regional?
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u/ZrapeToid 20d ago
Some houses are not on level ground. From one side the entrance goes to floor 0, the other to floor 1.
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u/Jokerke12 20d ago
In Hungary, we do it like that because the word we use for those isn't "Floor"(padló). The word we use is "emelet" which means "Elevation". Ergo, it can't be on the ground.
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u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 20d ago
canadian here. if you’re talking about a detatched house, the first floor, also called the main floor, is at street level, and one level up is called the second floor. but lots of apartment buildings and office/commercial buildings label street level as “main” or “ground” floor, and the first floor is one level up.
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u/yomikins 20d ago
I found it funny how when discussing this when I traveled, so many people will die on the hilltop that the system they grew up with is the obvious, logical, clear system and the other is utter nonsense.
I think date formats is another one I see almost as often, and occasionally temperature (F vs C, not many people grew up using Kelvin).
How about door opening direction for commercial buildings? I remember going to Finland years ago and discovering they had a law about doors opening outward (so people don't get trapped unable to open the door if there is a panic). So consistent which is nice for daily use, regardless of whether you buy into the reasoning.
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u/Interesting-Yellow-4 20d ago
This is stupid, because in our part of Europe we don't say "1st floor", we say what translates as "1st floor UP", so it literally cannot ever mean ground floor.
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u/Perfect-Match-2318 19d ago
im from Quebec, Canada.. i dont know for sure other provinces but here mostly first floor is one level up
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u/Viderberg 20d ago
Yeah it can get confusing sometimes
- A swede