How Much Is 1 Century?

A century lasts 100 years. It isn’t just a span of time; it’s also named ordinally. This means it’s the first, second, third, and so on. The word comes from the Latin centum, which stands for one hundred.

People often shorten century to c. When we talk about the hundredth anniversary, we say centennial or centenary. It usually marks the remembrance of something from a hundred years before.

Start and End of Centuries

Figuring out when centuries start and finish has two approaches. The first is strict scientific rules. And the other is what most people think and do.

Using strict construction, the 1st century AD began in AD 1 and ran through AD 100. The same goes for all other centuries. So, the first century starts at the year ’01 and ends at the year ‘100’.

Yet, the real world often sees things differently. People usually group centuries by their ‘hundreds’ digit(s). So, under this view, a century starts the year ’00 and ends the year ’99’.

1900 to 1999 is a good example. Even though this was the 20th century, it began with the year ‘1900’ and ended with the year ‘1999’ in popular thought.

Alternative Naming Systems

Certain languages group years based on the hundreds part. This trend is found in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish, and Hungarian. For example, 1900-1999 is called the “nineteen hundreds” or “190ohundreds”.

Italian has a unique twist on this method. It drops the word for ‘thousand’ and uses the numbers only for each century. So, the 15th century is “il Quattrocento” and the 16th is “il Cinquecento”. These terms are mainly used when talking about Italy’s history.

Conversion of Centuries to Years

Converting centuries to years is simple with a straightforward formula. Each century has 100 years. So, for the number of years in a given number of centuries, use:

years = centuries x 100.

As an example, if you’re dealing with 5 centuries, multiply them by 100. This gives you 500 years, without fuss.

This method is helpful for those in historical studies or anyone curious. It easily changes centuries to years and back again.