Natural numbers

I have a question for native speakers:
Were you taught at school what "natural numbers" are?
Thanks in advance for your replies.

We were taught they were positive integers.

Positive integers or whole numbers, but not natural numbers.

Ack!! Just figured it out. This is THE Tom, the man who created this great forum! The star gave you away Tom! Multicolour too, while mjd has to settle for a greyish star... Anyway, glad to meet you, doing a great job here! :)

What I meant was, I don't recall learning the term "natural numbers" when I was in school (1955-1967).

I don't know what a "natural" number is. We learned about positive, negative, even those crazy imaginary numbers, but I don't remember hearing about anything called "natural" numbers. What are they?

They taught us in school that natural numbers are positive integers or "counting numbers" (1, 2, 3, etc).

Finally I get to see the mythical Tom! I thought you would just have a normal star like mjd. :-)

Lazar is right - positive whole numbers

and while we are at it, the Arabs introduced the "number" zero which I think was considered heretical by the Church and they tried to stop its introduction.

In French, all numbers belonging to N = {0, 1, 2, ...} are called 'whole naturals' = Fr <entiers naturels>.

In Korea I learned "natural number", when, I think, I was in a first year middle shool.

"[n] the number 1 and any other number obtained by adding 1 to it repeatedly."

oh no it's when I was a elementry student...long long ago wow I forgot when I learned.

What was the school name for positive integers? I doubt that the name "positive integers" could be used in front of school kids without talking about "integers" first, which would include also negative numbers.

Natural numbers in Europe are equivalent to Integer numbers in the US.

Natural numbers:
The infinite set N = {1, 2, 3, ... }
Sometimes 0 is included N' = {0, 1, 2, 3, ...} but usually, 0 is not considered a natural number.

"In French, all numbers belonging to N = {0, 1, 2, ...} are called 'whole naturals' = Fr <entiers naturels>."

Those would be called "whole numbers" in English.