(Untitled)

[pwca]

I seem to recall that back in 1999 everyone was running around looking to the end of one millennium and the start of another in the year 2000. Which as we all know was wrong. The last millennium ended come December 31st, 2000 and the new one began on January 1st, 2001. The fact that people got this wrong was admitted afterwards

Comments

[notthebuddha]

The reign of a king is numbered beginning with 1 for the year of his ascension by ancient convention, and the Christian era attempted to follow this by counting the (estimated) year of the advent of the King of Kings as 1. In this way, not even Dec 31, 2000 was a full millenium.

Meanwhile, "the eighties" is verbal shorthand for the ten consecutive years with "eighty" in the name, and is more of a cultural trends marker. There being no particular relation to church matters, it doesn't need to conform to the same rules as a calendar decade.

[ffutures]

Had this conversation with someone yesterday. The decade does indeed end at the end of 2011, but the "noughties" do presumably end with the end of 2009 - it can't be the "noughties" if the year doesn't start with 0.

[timgray]

That's when the year is written in a different pattern. The tens counter clicking over is something people can see.

[anonymous]

Others have it right. If anyone ever says, "I was born in the 1970s... 1980, specifically," I'm going to think that person's a few pence shy of a pound.

To put it another way, there's no reason decade names and millennial markers need to line up; they're measuring different things. These kind of cross-markers happen a thousand different ways: wishing someone "Good afternoon!" when it's 11:59 a.m.; thinking of a U.S. president as elected in (say) 2008, even when his term doesn't start until 2009; thinking of a child as "three years old" regardless of whether they're 36 months old or 47 (a huge difference!).

[waitingforgo]

The above person was me, by the by. Stoopid "failing to stay logged in" websites...