centuries

[tigerlily11]

I would like to know why are centuries counted oddly. What I mean is why were the 1900's known as the 20th century and so on. It is rather confusing when trying to work out what is say the 16th century. I have think hard which way to go.
Thank you for your time.

[jake-the-peg]

If you think about it, I'm sure you'll see that the first century started with the year 1 and ran up to the year 100. The second century ran from the year 101 to 200 so the century number must nearly always be ahead of the year digit.

We'd have had to start with the "zeroth" century to make them match

[THECORBYLOON]

Imagine a game of football, if a goal were scored after 29 minutes and 30 seconds, they'd say it was scored in the 30th minute wouldn't they? With centuries think of 1st Century being the first hundred years and the year 101 is then the start of the second lot of a hundred years. By the way, as there was no year Zero, Centuries begin wi 01 so the Twentieth Century began in 1901 and ended in December 31st 2000.

[dundurn]

In Italy they do it both ways. You can say "il sedicesimo secolo" - the 16th century just as we do or you can say "il cinquecento" - literally "the 500" meaning any date from 1500 to 1599. (I think they ignore the 1000 as being understood - it was the Dark Ages and nothing happened!

It is a bit strange when you thin that within a century we talk about the 60s, 70s etc to define the decades which gives us such a problem when we want to talk about the noughties.