This might be a stupid question, but for that I’ve also been afraid to ask. But, I’ve been confused most of the time when people say “x-th century”. Why is the period 1900-1999 called the 20th century and not 19th century?
>In popular perception and practice, centuries are structured by grouping years based on sharing the ‘hundreds’ digit(s). In this model, the n-th century starts with the year that ends in “00” and ends with the year ending in “99”; for example, the years 1900 to 1999, in popular culture, constitute the 20th century. *(Wikipedia)*
What does it mean ‘in popular culture’? Why couldn’t, let’s say, the 19th century constitutes years within 1900-1999 and not the years before?
In: 1
Because the First Century is AD 1 to AD 100 (or 99). So the Second Century has to be 101-200 (or 100-199), the Third 201-300 (or 200-299). So the centuries are one less than the hundreds digit.
Because the First Century starts in AD 1, the ‘proper’ numbering doesn’t follow the common hundreds digit, but people prefer it that way.
>Why is the period 1900-1999 called the 20th century and not 19th century
Because there’s no “zeroth” century. The years 1-100 were the first century, 101-200 were the second, and it keeps going up like that.
I think what that quote is referring to is the difference between how the calendar strictly groups years and how most people in daily life group years. For example, according to the Gregorian calendar (the main one that we use in daily life), centuries start with a “01” and end on a “00”. For example, the 20th century started on January 1st, 1901, and ended on December 31st, 2000. This is slightly different than how people usually group years into centuries, where, for example, most people think of the year 2000 as being the first year of the 21st century and the 20th century was therefore 1900-2000 as opposed to the calendar which counts it as 1901-2000.
It’s also important to remember the word “century” has 2 meanings in this context and that can cause some confusion. The dictionary definition of a century is just a grouping of 100 years, so any group of 100 years is *a* century. For example, 12/31/1899 to 12/31/1999 is *a* century because it’s 100 years, but it’s not THE 19th century.
A century is 100 years. The first century would be years 0-99 (100 in total) thus. Continuing this pattern:
2nd: 100-199
3rd: 200-299
….
18th: 1700-1799
19th: 1800-1899
20th: 1900-1999
Etc.
Centuries start at 1, not 0. So years 1-99 would be the 1st, 100-199 would be the 2nd, and then it just continues forward until modern times.
The “popular culture” is just that it’s popular to start most things at 1, even though other cultures (such as programming and arrays) starts counting things at 0.
Think about a baby. During it’s its’ first year of life, it is 0 years old. It’s the same for centuries – the first century AD is year 1 to 999, the second century is 1000-1999, etc.
Follow this up to the year 1900, and it’s the 20th century. Same way that you re age 19 during your 20th year of life.
001-099 The 1st century
100-199 The 2nd century
200-299 The 3rd century
300-399 The 4th century
400-499 The 5th century
Edit: changed 000 to 001 for pedantic’s sake.
Imagine a person who’s 22 and a half years old.
That means they’ve already completed 22 full years, and are now working on the 23rd but it’s not done yet. They might say “I’m 22” but they are in fact IN their 23rd year.
This is the sense that “in the Nth Century” means.
If the year is 1950 that doesn’t mean you are 50 years into the 19th century. It means you already HAD 19 full centuries so far when you passed the 1900 mark, and now it’s been 50 years into the next century that’s not complete yet.
Same reason why a goal scored in football at 13min and 20sec is in the 14th minute (or at 0min and 20sec is in the 1st minute).
A baby’s first year alive ends with their first birthday.
The day after their first birthday is part of their second year.
A century is a period of 100 years, and we measure them from year 1. There is no year zero. The starting point is the year of the birth of Jesus Christ as calculated by someone, and AD is Latin for Anno Domini – Year of Our Lord; CE for Common Era has come into somewhat common usage to make the numbering system less Christian centric.
The first century is from AD (or CE) 1 to 100
The second century is from 101 to 200
The third century is from 201 to 300
So the Xth century is from (X-1)00 to X00
Note that a year ending in 00 is the last year of the century, not the first year of the next century.
Skip ahead several centuries, and we 19th century is 1801 to 1900; 20th century is 1901 to 2000; 21st century is 2001 to 2100, when we are now.
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