As I understand it, you only want the ‘most significant’ part. To do so, use floor(log10(abs(n))) to get number of digits and then go from there. Something like this, maybe:
import math
millnames = ['',' Thousand',' Million',' Billion',' Trillion']
def millify(n):
n = float(n)
millidx = max(0,min(len(millnames)-1,
int(math.floor(0 if n == 0 else math.log10(abs(n))/3))))
return '{:.0f}{}'.format(n / 10**(3 * millidx), millnames[millidx])
Running the above function for a bunch of different numbers:
for n in (1.23456789 * 10**r for r in range(-2, 19, 1)):
print('%20.1f: %20s' % (n,millify(n)))
0.0: 0
0.1: 0
1.2: 1
12.3: 12
123.5: 123
1234.6: 1 Thousand
12345.7: 12 Thousand
123456.8: 123 Thousand
1234567.9: 1 Million
12345678.9: 12 Million
123456789.0: 123 Million
1234567890.0: 1 Billion
12345678900.0: 12 Billion
123456789000.0: 123 Billion
1234567890000.0: 1 Trillion
12345678900000.0: 12 Trillion
123456789000000.0: 123 Trillion
1234567890000000.0: 1235 Trillion
12345678899999998.0: 12346 Trillion
123456788999999984.0: 123457 Trillion
1234567890000000000.0: 1234568 Trillion