# Do you call the 20th Century the 1900s? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 11, 2023, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914 "2023-09-11T04:18:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Amber13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/amber13/32/13807_2.png) [@Amber13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amber13)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/1 "2023-09-11T04:18:14Z")
Does anyone refer to the 20th Century the 1900s just like people calling the 1700s to refer the 18th century from 1700-1799? ---
**Author:** ![InternetLegend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/internetlegend/32/13154_2.png) [@InternetLegend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InternetLegend)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/2 "2023-09-11T04:33:42Z")
My daughter does this to make me feel old! But a a serious thing? No. ---
**Author:** ![Amber13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/amber13/32/13807_2.png) [@Amber13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amber13)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/3 "2023-09-11T04:42:43Z")
It isn’t a misuse for people to refer 1900-1999 as the 1900s, besides, it’s just easier to say than the ‘‘20th century’’. ---
**Author:** ![InternetLegend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/internetlegend/32/13154_2.png) [@InternetLegend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InternetLegend)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/4 "2023-09-11T04:56:10Z")
No, no, it’s perfectly correct! But it does indeed make me feel old. I suppose as the 21st century progresses, it’ll become more commonly used. Right now, if I hear “the 1900’s” I assume the time period that’s being discussed is 1900-1910. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/5 "2023-09-11T05:12:41Z")
I definitely have refered to the early 1900s, especially if already talking about the late 1800s. But the 80s or 90s or even 40s would be more likely to be used than 1900s or 20th Century. So for me 1900s would mostly be in reference to pre WWII. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/6 "2023-09-11T05:14:37Z")
I agree that the phrase “the early 1900s” sounds reasonable to me and the phrase “the late 1900s” sounds weird. ---
**Author:** ![Amber13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/amber13/32/13807_2.png) [@Amber13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amber13)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/7 "2023-09-11T05:40:01Z")
‘‘The Late 1900s’’ doesn’t sound weird to me, but IRYO, People refer 1900-1930s, the early 1900s, 1940s-1960s, the mid 1900s and the 1970s-1990s the late 1900s. ---
**Author:** ![Clarence\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47c2d/32.png) [@Clarence\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clarence_R)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/8 "2023-09-11T08:13:44Z")
The 18th Century was from 1701 through 1800, not 1700 - 1799 ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/9 "2023-09-11T09:18:13Z")
Ten years, and this is what brings you out of retirement. Impressive work, @Clarence_R. Anyways, when you live in the 20th Century, the 1900s is obviously a reference to a specific decade, and I currently refer to 2000-2010 as ‘the 2000s’ even though I know this whole century will soon enough be called that, just like we did when we were approaching it. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/10 "2023-09-11T09:42:16Z")
> [@Clarence\_R](#): > > The 18th Century was from 1701 through 1800, not 1700 - 1799 Nonsense. Nobody is remotely concerned with the precise elapsed time since 00:01am in year 1, when nothing significant actually happened, except in a symbolic conventional sense. It is nothing more than a reference datum. And in any case, the century and millennium are never used as precise units of elapsed time. We would never say “the Civil War was 1.6 centuries ago”. We use “century” and “millennium” to refer to either _very approximate_ elapsed time (“a century ago”, “two millennia have passed”) that emphasizes the difference in historical epoch. Or to refer to a numerically labeled historical epoch - in which case it’s far more natural for a century to mean all the years that begin with the same two digits, and for the turn of the century to be when those digits change. The fact that nobody took seriously the suggestion that the 21st century started on January 1st 2001 is not that everyone just ignored the fact that this is “technically correct”. It is _not_ technically correct. The spurious claim is based on the misconception that “century” and “millennium” are units of time conceptually identical to seconds or years, and that their purpose is to measure precise elapsed time. No doubt you also insist that the tomato is a fruit. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/11 "2023-09-11T10:36:53Z")
To me the 1900s is the decade between 1900 and 1909, and every other decade in that century has a distinct and different name. > **[1900s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900s)** > > The 1900s (pronounced "nineteen-hundreds") was a decade that began on January 1, 1900, and ended on December 31, 1909. The Edwardian era (1901–1910) covers a similar span of time. The term "nineteen-hundreds" is sometimes also used to mean the entire century from January 1, 1900 to December 31, 1999 (the years beginning with "19"). > The Scramble for Africa continued, with the Orange Free State, South African Republic, Ashanti Empire, Aro Confederacy, Sokoto Caliphate and Kano Emirate being conque... I get confused when anyone starts talking about the 1900s when they mean events that occurred in the 1990s, but it does seem to be quite common nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![Amber13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/amber13/32/13807_2.png) [@Amber13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amber13)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/12 "2023-09-11T10:41:44Z")
As the 21st century progresses, people will be the calling the 20th century, the ‘‘1900s’’. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/13 "2023-09-11T10:48:29Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > To me the 1900s is the decade between 1900 and 1909 Yes, that was the usage I grew up with. The problem is that there are some decades that don’t have natural names. What about the 1910-1919 decade? The best we have is the “nineteen-tens”. And the new millenium has exacerbated the problem. Was the first decade the “twenty-hundreds”? The “two-thousands”? I don’t think there’s any consensus for these or any other terms. ---
**Author:** ![Amber13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/amber13/32/13807_2.png) [@Amber13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amber13)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/14 "2023-09-11T10:55:42Z")
The only thing I can say to you, is that there’s no correct way of saying the decades or the entire century itself, the same thing in other languages, there’s no general consensus, people either 1900s as either ‘‘1900-1909’’, ''1900-1910 ‘’ or ‘‘1900-1999’’. Wikipedia says that people sometimes refer 1900s as the entire 20th century because the years start with ‘‘19’’ on it. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/15 "2023-09-11T11:24:45Z")
I think the last century is too recent, and too many of us lived through part of it - which gives us knowledge of how long a century is, and how little the early decades of a century have with the final. So we know there are limited instances in which it is meaningful to lump pre-air flight 1901 with computer and cellphone 1999. Since we are only up to the 2020s, if we are talking about the 30s-90s in the past, folk will understand that we are talking about the 1930s-1990s, with out needing the 19. As centuries progress backwards, we lack both of those points of reference. ---
**Author:** ![Kzbre5m](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f08c70/32.png) [@Kzbre5m](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kzbre5m)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/16 "2023-09-11T11:28:06Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > And the new millenium has exacerbated the problem. Was the first decade the “twenty-hundreds”? The “two-thousands”? I don’t think there’s any consensus for these or any other terms. Yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Good thing it only happens every 100 years. Actually, I remember the question what to call the first decade in the years leading up to 2000, and “what did they do back in 1900?” To answer the OP, I’m going to use “the 1900s” more. I never liked “20th century” or “21st century”, let alone books that called it the XXth Century (roman numeral style). It confused me as a child – if this is 19xx why are we calling it 20th century? Finally, as a programmer, the starting year is always zero! ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/17 "2023-09-11T11:42:27Z")
> [@Kzbre5m](#): > > To answer the OP, I’m going to use “the 1900s” more. I never liked “20th century” or “21st century”, let alone books that called it the XXth Century (roman numeral style). It confused me as a child – if this is 19xx why are we calling it 20th century? I agree, I think usage has changed enough that we already would need to elaborate to make it clear we were referring to the first decade, and it’s much a more natural way to describe the century. We don’t care about the total elapsed time since the arbitrary datum. We care about labeling the 100-year-long historical epochs, and we care about the order of those epochs. Calling 1900-1999 “the 1900s” is a much more intuitive label than “twentieth century”, and we don’t lose the ordering (the 1800s is still obviously the century before the 1900s). ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/18 "2023-09-11T11:53:47Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > …too many of us lived through part of it - which gives us knowledge of how long a century is, and how little the early decades of a century have with the final. My mother was born in 1910, and my grandmother died in the Spanish flu in 1919. The early decades of the 20th century are closer than some may think. ---
**Author:** ![Amber13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/amber13/32/13807_2.png) [@Amber13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amber13)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/19 "2023-09-11T12:23:27Z")
I agree with you, I’ll be referring the century as the ‘‘1900s’’ than the ‘‘20th Century’’ and the century we’re in now as the ‘‘2000s’’ than the ‘‘21st Century’’ because the way centuries are worded out are suddenly going backwards. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2023, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914/20 "2023-09-11T12:36:23Z")
I believe we all understand why the century number is a digit higher than the first 2 digits of the year (s) in question, but I don’t like it. Never did. It creates a momentary pause of anxiety whenever discussing a particular year’s century (e.g. _1796…hmm, OK take 17 and add 1…alright, that was in the latter 18th century_). I don’t like having to do complicated math whenever I refer to a century, and I don’t believe I’m alone. So, I propose that we as a society throw accuracy aside and henceforth refer to the first two digits of the year as the century number. Make it law. We’re now in the 20th century. I was born in the 19th century. Easy peasy. As for the first decade of each century, it should be mandatory that we call it the _noughties_ (followed by the tens). Example: Michael Jackson died in the late 20 noughties. That was a sad early 20th-century event. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-call-the-20th-century-the-1900s/989914.md?page=2)