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This is more of a linguistic question rather then a maths question. From a linguistic point of view the decimal system is a fairly modern system. It was mostly used in academic circles until maths were introduced to lower levels of education. Most people used fractional maths in their daily life, and the decimal system is horrible for fractions. Instead people counted in dozens, i.e. 12. You can still find this everywhere with lots of packages in the supermarket being packets of 6,12 or 18. Regular people would therefore use the numbers 1-12 very often. You would not buy thirteen eggs, you would buy a dozen and one eggs. In Britain you would not pay thirteen pence but rather a shilling and a penny. And still in a few places you would not measure up thirteen inches but rather a foot and an inch.
It should be noted that the other common number system in addition to the dozen is the score, which is 20. And you still can find traces of this in the language as well. This is why the teens are written differently from the higher numbers.
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