It’s quite interesting. For example Fidel Castro made sure that Cuba celebrated correctly at the end of year 2000. And the U.S. Naval Observatory, official timekeeper for the country, held a party for the new milennium then too.
We have redefined it. The thing about language is no one controls it. If enough people want to call 2000 the start of the new millennium, then that’s when it was. It’s all arbitrary numbers anyway.
I meant in the sense of “Make Year 1 Year 0, shift all dates back one year, cause a lot of headaches when dealing with dates written down before year shift vs after year shift, but at least the 3rd millennium now properly starts at 2000”, but you have a better point
If we were to redefine it I wonder what way we’d go. Make -1 the first year of the first century and go in consistent 100 year steps from there? Or just accept that the first century and the first millenium are a little shorter than a hundred or a thousand years respectively?
Name “-1” year zero and have that be the start of the first century and millennium, would probably be the most reasonable option.
The idea I originally had would have been to decrement the year numbers, so that year 1 is now y0, 546 is 545 and 2001 is 2000.
But changing existing dates is a recipe for nightmares, so let’s not.
With that version you’re still changing some historical dates though, like dates of death for roman emporers. Admittedly it is less of a problem though because you need to do the conversion from their calendar to ours anyway. It’s just that modern documents containing already converted dates would now be off in retrospect.
2000 was the last year of the second millennium and also the first year of the 00s. 2001 was the first year of the third millennium and the second year of the 00s.
Apparently yeah. In fact, it’s actually easy to tell which years are in the 2nd millenium just by knowing its final year.
But people chose to celebrate the new millenium in 2000 because it’s much more fun to have every single digit in a calendar year change than having only one digit change and calling it “a new millenium”. Also, January 1, 2000 looks and feels so much cooler in my opinion, unless you write it in the dd/mm/yy format (mm/dd/yy wouldn’t make much of a difference), in which case 01/01/01 has that nice satisfying feeling of all variables being the same value.
Apparently yeah. In fact, it’s actually easy to tell which years are in the 2nd millenium just by knowing its final year.
That was the point of my question, the disbelief of “wait, 2k is the last year and not 1999?”
And I think it would be even easier if one could just look at the thousands digit and tell from that. It would be even more easier if the millennia and years and such were all 0-indexed, so you’d have the zeroth millennium spanning 0-999, the first millennium 1000-1999, the 19th century would be 1900-1999…
Would be nice, but unfortunately you can’t change a calendar system the world is so incredibly used to. Just the change from the Julian to the Gregorian was a massive change.
So 2000 was still 2nd millennium?
Yes, but most people ignored it and celebrated the new millennium at the end of 1999 and beginning of 2000 anyway.
See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium#Debate_over_millennium_celebrations
It’s quite interesting. For example Fidel Castro made sure that Cuba celebrated correctly at the end of year 2000. And the U.S. Naval Observatory, official timekeeper for the country, held a party for the new milennium then too.
Can’t we just redefine it? That doesn’t seem reasonable in my mind.
(This is a joke, I know how awful that would go)
We have redefined it. The thing about language is no one controls it. If enough people want to call 2000 the start of the new millennium, then that’s when it was. It’s all arbitrary numbers anyway.
I meant in the sense of “Make Year 1 Year 0, shift all dates back one year, cause a lot of headaches when dealing with dates written down before year shift vs after year shift, but at least the 3rd millennium now properly starts at 2000”, but you have a better point
If we were to redefine it I wonder what way we’d go. Make -1 the first year of the first century and go in consistent 100 year steps from there? Or just accept that the first century and the first millenium are a little shorter than a hundred or a thousand years respectively?
Name “-1” year zero and have that be the start of the first century and millennium, would probably be the most reasonable option.
The idea I originally had would have been to decrement the year numbers, so that year 1 is now y0, 546 is 545 and 2001 is 2000. But changing existing dates is a recipe for nightmares, so let’s not.
With that version you’re still changing some historical dates though, like dates of death for roman emporers. Admittedly it is less of a problem though because you need to do the conversion from their calendar to ours anyway. It’s just that modern documents containing already converted dates would now be off in retrospect.
2000 was the last year of the second millennium and also the first year of the 00s. 2001 was the first year of the third millennium and the second year of the 00s.
That makes it even worse
Apparently yeah. In fact, it’s actually easy to tell which years are in the 2nd millenium just by knowing its final year.
But people chose to celebrate the new millenium in 2000 because it’s much more fun to have every single digit in a calendar year change than having only one digit change and calling it “a new millenium”. Also, January 1, 2000 looks and feels so much cooler in my opinion, unless you write it in the dd/mm/yy format (mm/dd/yy wouldn’t make much of a difference), in which case 01/01/01 has that nice satisfying feeling of all variables being the same value.
That was the point of my question, the disbelief of “wait, 2k is the last year and not 1999?”
And I think it would be even easier if one could just look at the thousands digit and tell from that. It would be even more easier if the millennia and years and such were all 0-indexed, so you’d have the zeroth millennium spanning 0-999, the first millennium 1000-1999, the 19th century would be 1900-1999…
Would be nice, but unfortunately you can’t change a calendar system the world is so incredibly used to. Just the change from the Julian to the Gregorian was a massive change.
I know, I can but dream…
Yes, the third rolled in 1 jan 2001.