It was invented by the late Professor Madeupname of the Department of Modern Languages in the University of Luxembourg in the 1930s. His idea was to promote harmony and peace in the world by encouraging the use of many languages. For this purpose, he devised numerous compound words. "Ab" is the Frisian word for "short"; "brev" is the Persian word for "small"; "iat" is a Hungarian gypsy dialect word for "dwarf"; and "ion" is the Romanian word for "word". He combined these together to make the word "abbreviation". There were several other words of the same type, but "abbreviation" is the only common such word which is still in common use today.