This page is about centuries as units of time. For other meanings of the term, see Century (disambiguation). For a list of centuries, see Centuries.
A
century (From the
Latin cent, one hundred) is
one hundred consecutive
years.
- In all dating systems, centuries are essentially numbered ordinally. Thus, the first century of a time frame is "The First Century" and not "Century 0".
- There is considerable disagreement about whether to count the centennial year (e.g. 2000) as the first or last year of a century. This confusion is documented for every centennial year from 1500 onward, and almost certainly arises from the introduction of Hindu-Arabic numerals and the concept of zero to Western Europe in the twelfth century.
The oldest dating systems were
regnal, and considered the date as an ordinal, not a cardinal number. Thus, one speaks of the first year of the reign of King John for example. Obviously, the century problem does not arise in such systems. Somewhat later, systems arose dating from the founding of a dynasty, city or religion, and these continued ordinal, rather than cardinal, counting. Thus
Ab Urbe Condita counts the Year 1 as the founding of Rome;
Anno Domini as the first full year of Jesus Christ's life; the
Islamic calendar as the year of the
Hijra, so it is also Latinized as
Anno Hegirae, or "year of the Hejira."
In the
Gregorian calendar, the calendar that is currently used for most purposes nearly everywhere in the world, the first year is that of the traditionally accepted year of Jesus' birth. There is no "year zero". Accordingly, the first century includes the years 1-100 anno Domini, the first millennium (or period of ten centuries) is the years 1-1000 anno Domini, and so on. So according to this measure year 2000 belongs to the second millennium and the first year of the third millennium and 21st century is 2001.
More modern systems of dating (such as that of
astronomical year numbering, used by
astronomers) begin with a year zero. In these cardinal dating systems, it is perfectly logical to use 0 to 99 as the first century, and to regard 2000 as the first year of the twenty-first century. The year 0 corresponding then to year 1BC.
References
"The Battle of the Centuries", Ruth Freitag, U.S. Government Printing Office. Available from the Superintendent of Documents, PO Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250- 7954. Cite stock no. 030-001-00153-9.
EXAMPLE: The year 1900 is still 19th century. The year 1901 is 20th century. The year 2000 is 20th century. The year 2001 is 21st century.
See also
Century may refer to:
Groups of 100
- Century, a unit of 100 years
- Century or centuria, term used in ancient Rome both for a military unit and a political unit
- Century, a collection of 100 sonnets
..... Click the link for more information. Upper Paleolithic - 10th millennium BC | 9th millennium BC | 8th millennium BC
- 7th millennium BC | 6th millennium BC | 5th millennium BC
..... Click the link for more information. Latin}}}
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
Regulated by: Opus Fundatum Latinitas
Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
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100 (one hundred) (the Roman numeral is C for centum) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101.
In mathematics
One hundred is the square of 10 (in scientific notation it is written as ).
..... Click the link for more information. A year (from Old English gēr) is the time between two recurrences of an event related to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. By extension, this can be applied to any planet: for example, a "Martian year" is the time in which Mars completes its own orbit.
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Hindu-Arabic numeral system (also called Algorism) is a positional decimal numeral system documented from the 9th century.
The symbols (glyphs) used to represent the system are in principle independent of the system itself.
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0 (zero) is both a number and a numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals. It plays a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures.
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Ab Urbe condita (literally, "from the city, having been founded") is a monumental history of Rome, from its legendary founding (ab Urbe condita, dated to 753 BC by Varro and most modern scholars). The book was written by Titus Livius (around 59 BC–AD 17).
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Anno Domini (Latin: (In)The year of (Our) Lord[1]), abbreviated as AD or A.D., defines an epoch based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
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Islamic calendar or Muslim calendar (Arabic: التقويم الهجري; at-taqwīm al-hijrī
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The Hijra (هِجْرَة), or withdrawal, is the emigration of Muhammad and his followers to the city of Medina in 622. Alternate spellings of this Arabic word in the Latin alphabet are Hijrah, or Hegira in Latin.
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Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world. A modification of the Julian calendar, it was first proposed by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius, and was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, for whom it was named, on 24 February 1582 via the papal bull
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Astronomical year numbering is based on AD/CE year numbering, but follows normal decimal integer numbering more strictly. Thus, it has a year 0 and the years before that are designated with a minus sign '−'. The era designations AD/CE are dropped.
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An astronomer or astrophysicist is a person whose area of interest is astronomy or astrophysics.
Astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences
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Upper Paleolithic - 10th millennium BC | 9th millennium BC | 8th millennium BC
- 7th millennium BC | 6th millennium BC | 5th millennium BC
..... Click the link for more information. Annum is a Latin noun meaning year. It is the accusative singular of the second declension masculine noun annus (nominative), anni (genitive) [1] .
As a unit of time, it is defined as exactly 365.
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A millennium (pl. millennia) is a period of time equal to one thousand years (from Latin mille, thousand, and annum, year).
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