If we were to redefine it I wonder what way we’d go. Make -1 the first year of the first century and go in consistent 100 year steps from there? Or just accept that the first century and the first millenium are a little shorter than a hundred or a thousand years respectively?
Name “-1” year zero and have that be the start of the first century and millennium, would probably be the most reasonable option.
The idea I originally had would have been to decrement the year numbers, so that year 1 is now y0, 546 is 545 and 2001 is 2000.
But changing existing dates is a recipe for nightmares, so let’s not.
With that version you’re still changing some historical dates though, like dates of death for roman emporers. Admittedly it is less of a problem though because you need to do the conversion from their calendar to ours anyway. It’s just that modern documents containing already converted dates would now be off in retrospect.
If we were to redefine it I wonder what way we’d go. Make -1 the first year of the first century and go in consistent 100 year steps from there? Or just accept that the first century and the first millenium are a little shorter than a hundred or a thousand years respectively?
Name “-1” year zero and have that be the start of the first century and millennium, would probably be the most reasonable option.
The idea I originally had would have been to decrement the year numbers, so that year 1 is now y0, 546 is 545 and 2001 is 2000. But changing existing dates is a recipe for nightmares, so let’s not.
With that version you’re still changing some historical dates though, like dates of death for roman emporers. Admittedly it is less of a problem though because you need to do the conversion from their calendar to ours anyway. It’s just that modern documents containing already converted dates would now be off in retrospect.