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
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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