Words used to describe imaginary numbers...
"impossible"
"fictitious" - Cardano
"the ghosts of real numbers" - Napier
"mental tortures" - Cardano
"improbable numbers"
"nonsense numbers"
"a sort of amphibian, halfway between existence and nonexistence, resembling in this respect the Holy Ghost in Christian theology" - Leibniz

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"Imaginary Numbers were once thought to be impossible, and so they were called "Imaginary" (to make fun of them).

But then people researched them more and discovered they were actually useful and important because they filled a gap in mathematics...but the "imaginary" name has stuck.

And this is also how the name "Real Numbers" came about."(mathisfun.com)

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WHY I CHOSE TO DO MY PROJECT ON IMAGINARY NUMBERS...
Unlike others, I can’t say I have always had a passion for imaginary numbers and that is why I chose this topic. I was tutoring a student in math 1050 and we were working with finding factors and zeros. As we came up with some complex factors, I realized that although I know \(i=\sqrt{-1}\), I don’t know much else about imaginary numbers. Therefore, I thought it could be fun to learn a little more about imaginary numbers.