# BC/AD vs. BCE/CE **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 5, 2013, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055 "2013-09-05T07:02:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/41 "2013-09-06T16:05:41Z")
None of you existed before I was born, so you might as well start your calendar there. imho ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/42 "2013-09-06T16:10:12Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > “Crept in”? The “human error” was there at the very beginning! Dennis was off by around 4 years from the outset. The adjustments needed dated from well before the purported date of Jesus’ birth, as well, from the Julian calendar (which was, after all, purportedly created by Julius Caesar 40 or so years prior to the birth of Jesus). > > It’s ALL human error because the whole thing was created by humans. Thanks for the clarification, but that’s really irrelevant to the point. The intent was to have a calendar based on the year of the birth of Jesus. Even if the year was wrong, the intent was to have it line up with Jesus’ birth. > [@](#): > > That the system is named and based on the purported date of the birth of the purported son of God doesn’t lend it any sort of divine nature. Thanks for that too, but this is off subject, I don’t believe we are talking about if a deity inspired the current calendar based on the birth of it’s offspring. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/43 "2013-09-06T17:38:11Z")
> [@aNewLeaf](#): > > None of you existed before I was born, so you might as well start your calendar there. imho So… when we turned over the calendar, it’s like we were turning over a new leaf? Ba dum-kssh! ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/44 "2013-09-06T18:15:39Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > [List of date formats by country - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country) Good reference, though it doesn’t address your claim. It does point to [this article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_the_United_States), which says: > [@wikipedia](#): > > In the United States, dates are traditionally written in the “month day, year” order It goes on to say that day-month order increased gradually since the early 1980s. Strunk and White cautions against writing “December 31” as “December 31st.” However, the latter is how most people seem to say it. Their caution might be a bit pedantic, as Chief Pedant would probably argue, and I wouldn’t object. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2013, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/45 "2013-09-06T21:25:50Z")
Why do we have to have two sets of years (one running forward and one running backward) anyway? What we ought to do is define a year zero and have a single calendar where the years are named with positive and negative numbers. The year 2000 and the year -2000 would be 4000 years apart. Perfect. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2013, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/46 "2013-09-07T01:16:51Z")
‘6 September 2013’ is kind of backwards anyway from a significant digit point of view. Should be ‘2013 September 6’. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2013, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/47 "2013-09-07T05:40:24Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > It’s also more accurate. It makes no sense to say Jesus was born in 4 BC, but it’s perfectly sensible to say he was born in 4 BCE. You mean he wasn’t anointed when he was 4 to 6 years old? For an alternative, I might be inclined to use the French Revolutionary Calendar, but it’s pretty clearly named and organized to fit France’s climate, not other latitudes. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2013, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/48 "2013-09-07T06:41:11Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > Good reference, though it doesn’t address your claim. Of course it adresses the claim. It shows that only in the U.S. (and Belize) do they use ‘december 5 2013’. The rest of the world uses ‘5 december 2013’. Even your military uses day-month notation. ---
**Author:** ![W0X0F](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b77776/32.png) [@W0X0F](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/W0X0F)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2013, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/49 "2013-09-07T21:33:20Z")
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:45, topic:668055”] Why do we have to have two sets of years (one running forward and one running backward) anyway? What we ought to do is define a year zero and have a single calendar where the years are named with positive and negative numbers. The year 2000 and the year -2000 would be 4000 years apart. Perfect. [/QUOTE] From [ISO 8601](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601): ISO 8601 prescribes, as a minimum, a four-digit year [YYYY] to avoid the year 2000 problem. It therefore represents years from 0000 to 9999, year 0000 being equal to 1 BC and all others AD. To represent years before 0000 or after 9999, the standard also permits the expansion of the year representation but only by prior agreement between the sender and the receiver. An expanded year representation [±YYYYY] must have an agreed-upon number of extra year digits beyond the four-digit minimum, and it must be prefixed with a + or − sign instead of the common AD or BC notation; by convention 1 BC is labelled +0000, 2 BC is labeled -0001, and so on. (This has my vote for avoiding the whole BC/AD vs BCE/CE issue and also takes care of when the Millennium starts. Bonus!) ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2013, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/50 "2013-09-07T22:30:24Z")
This is going around Tumblr this week, on a small scale (282 notes is not much). > **["I \[recently\] resorted to the un-PC abbreviation AD, whereas my usual...](https://likeavirgil.tumblr.com/post/60207176810/i-recently-resorted-to-the-un-pc-abbreviation)** > > Jan Ziolkowski > [@](#): > > “I [recently] resorted to the un-PC abbreviation AD, whereas my usual practice for thirty years has been to use the divisions BCE and CE. A couple of months ago, a dear former colleague of mine in Biblical studies at Harvard told me of a Jewish mentor he had who clung in contrarian fashion to the BC/AD nomenclature. When questioned how he could accept BC, he said, ‘Well, I take BC as meaning “before Christianity.”’ No problem there. And when asked how he could apply the AD concept without being untrue to his Jewishness, he replied that to him it signified not ‘anno Domini’ but ‘After dat.’” > > Jan Ziolkowski ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2013, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/51 "2013-09-08T02:11:14Z")
For what it’s worth, I am a Roman historian. I’ve taken a quick look through the last dozen or so books I read and all of them use BC/AD. I struggle to remember the last time I have seen CE in print. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2013, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/52 "2013-09-08T03:07:40Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > (2) In the unlikely event that a major calendar change is made, will anyone join me in pushing for a Year Zero? Maybe I’m just too used to communicating with computers rather than humans but it’s always seemed wrong that the span from 25 BC to 25 AD is 49 years, not 50. Not me. Calling the first year “0” rather than “1” seems nonsentical to me. (FTR regarding the OP : there’s no equivalent to CE/BCE in French, only “After JC” and “Before JC”. I wonder if there’s one in other languages) ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2013, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/53 "2013-09-08T03:21:23Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > For what it’s worth, I am a Roman historian. I’ve taken a quick look through the last dozen or so books I read and all of them use BC/AD. I struggle to remember the last time I have seen CE in print. Well, I’d hope you’d at least see AUC as well? Or Xth year of Emperor Y. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2013, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/54 "2013-09-08T03:27:15Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > Well, I’d hope you’d at least see AUC as well? Or Xth year of Emperor Y. Consular years come up an awful lot, too. None of the documents I work on are dated ab urbe condita; it’s just a totally different kind of material. In my own work, as an atheist Jew, I use BC/AD. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2013, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/55 "2013-09-08T15:16:49Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Not me. Calling the first year “0” rather than “1” seems nonsentical to me. And to me, at least until we get around to having a Month Zero and a Day Zero, which we seem to be managing fine without. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2013, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/56 "2013-09-08T23:17:52Z")
> [@W0X0F](#): > > ISO 8601 prescribes… I approve of ISO 8601. > [@clairobscur](#): > > Not me. Calling the first year “0” rather than “1” seems nonsentical to me. There isn’t a “first year.” There’s merely an arbitrary point on the calendar, and we use one numbering system for years before that and one for years after that. Making that point “zero” means that we go to a single numbering system and gets rid of AD, BC, CE, and BCE entirely. It’s just numbers. And numbers have a zero. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/57 "2013-09-09T00:46:02Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > For what it’s worth, I am a Roman historian. I’ve taken a quick look through the last dozen or so books I read and all of them use BC/AD. I struggle to remember the last time I have seen CE in print. Maeglin, would you please look at the thread I just started in GQ, “How Incomplete is Our Knowledge of 1st-Century Rome?” ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/58 "2013-09-09T17:26:19Z")
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:56, topic:668055”] I approve of ISO 8601. There isn’t a “first year.” There’s merely an arbitrary point on the calendar, and we use one numbering system for years before that and one for years after that. Making that point “zero” means that we go to a single numbering system and gets rid of AD, BC, CE, and BCE entirely. It’s just numbers. And numbers have a zero. [/QUOTE] Is there or isn’t there a Year Zero in the system you are arguing for? And in that case does it matter a hill of beans whether you want to call it “the first year”? ---
**Author:** ![Vaevictis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f04885/32.png) [@Vaevictis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vaevictis)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/59 "2013-09-09T19:05:51Z")
What I’ve never been able to understand is how BCE/CE is supposed to be less Christian-centric. What is more arrogant than taking a Christian dating system and asserting that it is common to everyone? ---
**Author:** ![Vaevictis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f04885/32.png) [@Vaevictis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vaevictis)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055/60 "2013-09-09T19:08:17Z")
RE: Maeglin and when you see BCE/CE It seems most of the college level world history textbooks use it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bc-ad-vs-bce-ce/668055.md?page=4)