# The decade is almost half over. What are we calling it anyway? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [December 20, 2004, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decade-is-almost-half-over-what-are-we-calling-it-anyway/280794 "2004-12-20T14:24:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 5
**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:** [March 25, 2005, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decade-is-almost-half-over-what-are-we-calling-it-anyway/280794/81 "2005-03-25T00:14:33Z")
> [@Naughtyman](#): > > PS roaring twenties, dirty thirties, fabulous forties, nifty fifties, sexy sixties, heavenly seventies, fraidy eighties, whiny nineties… > > what follows? The **Naughty Aughties** , of course! But, really, most Americans will probably say the Zeroes (0’s), or the Oh’s (O’s)–maybe the Oh-Oh’s (00’s). ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decade-is-almost-half-over-what-are-we-calling-it-anyway/280794/82 "2005-03-25T00:33:09Z")
Or the “Ooze” (000). ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decade-is-almost-half-over-what-are-we-calling-it-anyway/280794/83 "2005-03-25T00:33:34Z")
Didn’t the beginning of the last century get lumped in with the end of the century before it and get called: Fin de siècle (French for “end of the century”)? I don’t have an opinion on what to call recent years because years that don’t start with 19 don’t really feel like years, yet. Must be my incipient codgerhood. ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decade-is-almost-half-over-what-are-we-calling-it-anyway/280794/84 "2005-03-25T19:45:00Z")
Hey, in [Cecil’s PCP column](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050325.html), he refers to the post-1990’s era as “the new century.” Clearly we should all follow his lead. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decade-is-almost-half-over-what-are-we-calling-it-anyway/280794/85 "2005-03-26T14:30:29Z")
> [@Baldwin](#): > > I suppose someone should take up the wearisome burden of reminding us that we are only at the end of the **fourth** year of this millennium, century and decade. > > I would favor the “oughts”, myself. Ah! Here’s the post that started the trouble. True indeed, in the system measuring from the incorrectly calculated date of Jesus Christ’s birth, we are only just now in the fifth year of the third millennium, the 21st century, and the 210th decade following the calculated date of that event. The fallacy is in assuming that the decade for which we are trying to generate a convenient yet unawkward nickname is that self-same 210th decade. The two are distinct, in that their start dates differ by a year. True, grouping and naming things thusly leaves the very first years Anno Domini one shy of a decade if one extends the alternate system backward to the beginning. But given that the calculation was done long after anyone alive during those nine years was comfortably dead, and, since Jesus hadn’t made himself widely known during the jilted pseudo-decade yet, leaving its occupants blissfully ignorant of the significance of the numbering, I see little reason to give a shit on their behalf for whatever slight we imagine they might feel at the deficit. Screw 'em. They’re not as bad off as the people who lived in the years prior to 1 AD, who, had they had any inkling of what the renumbering had done to them, would have had to subtract a number for each successive year through which they lived. Who’s speaking out for them? BTW, regarding the OP, I nominate the “Goose Eggs”, “The Zilchies”, or perhaps, “Bupkus” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-decade-is-almost-half-over-what-are-we-calling-it-anyway/280794.md?page=4)