A century is a period of 100 years or 10 decades. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c. A centennial or centenary is a hundredth anniversary, or a celebration of this, typically the remembrance of an event which took place a hundred years earlier.

Start and end of centuries

Although a century can mean any arbitrary period of 100 years, there are two viewpoints on the nature of standard centuries. One is based on strict construction, while the other is based on popular perception. According to the strict construction, the 1st century AD, which began with

AD 1 The 0s began on January 1, AD 1 and ended on December 31, AD 9, covering the first nine years of the Common Era. In Europe, the 0s saw the continuation of conflict between the Roman Empire and Germanic tribes in the Early Imperial campaigns ...

, ended with

AD 100 __NOTOC__ In the Roman Empire, it was sometimes referred to as year 853 ''ab urbe condita'', i.e., 853 years since the founding of Rome in 753 B.C. The denomination AD 100 for this year has been used since the Early Middle Ages, when the An ...

, and the 2nd century with AD 200; in this model, the ''n''-th century starts with a year that follows a year with a multiple of 100 (except the first century as it began after the year 1 BC) and ends with the next coming year with a multiple of 100 (''100n''), i.e. the 20th century comprises the years 1901 to 2000, and the 21st century comprises the years 2001 to 2100 in strict usage. In common 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, in

popular culture Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of cultural practice, practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art f. pop artor mass art, sometimes contraste ...

, the years 1900 to 1999 constitute the 20th century, and the years 2000 to 2099 constitute the 21st century. (This is similar to the grouping of "0-to-9 decades" which share the 'tens' digit.) To facilitate calendrical calculations by computer, the astronomical year numbering and ISO 8601 systems both contain a year zero, with the astronomical year 0 corresponding to the year 1 BC, the astronomical year -1 corresponding to 2 BC, and so on.

Alternative naming systems

Informally, years may be referred to in groups based on the hundreds part of the year. In this system, the years 1900–1999 are referred to as the ''nineteen hundreds'' (''1900s''). Aside from English usage, this system is used in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish and Hungarian. The Swedish (or ), Danish (or ), Norwegian (or ), Finnish (or ) and Hungarian (or ) refer unambiguously to the years 1900–1999. In Swedish, however, a century is in more rare cases referred to as ("the n-th century") rather than , i.e. the 17th century is (in rare cases) referred to as rather than ''1600-talet'' and mainly also referring to the years 1601–1700 rather than 1600–1699; according to '' Svenska Akademiens ordbok'', may refer to either the years 1501–1600 or 1500–1599.

Similar dating units in other calendar systems

While the century has been commonly used in the West, other cultures and calendars have utilized differently sized groups of years in a similar manner. The Hindu calendar, in particular, summarizes its years into groups of 60, while the Aztec calendar considers groups of 52.

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