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From: churchyh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Henry Churchyard)
Subject: Re: Why AD Latin, BC English?
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In article <mccombtmCwLEI5.MA6@netcom.com>,
Paul J. Gans <gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Edward Zotti (ezotti@merle.acns.nwu.edu) wrote:
>: Does anybody know why AD, anno domini, is Latin, while the
>: abbreviation BC, before Christ, is English? The earliest use of
>: anno domini appears to have been in the 12th century. 
>My copy of Bede is at home, but the Venerable Bede introduced
>the notion of dating events from the birth of Christ.

All the standard references say it was the monk Dionysius Exiguus
(``little Dennis'') who introduced the synchronism A.U.C. 754 = 1 A.D,
and he did so around 525 A.D, about 150 years before Bede.  The term
Dionysius seems to have used was "ab incanatione Domini" ``from the
Lord's incarnation'', by analogy with the term "ab urbe condita"
``from the founding of the city [i.e. Rome]'' already in use at the
time.  In his chronometric calculations he omitted a period of 4 years
(``the period when Augustus ruled under his own name of Octavianus'')
or he would have put Jesus' birth in 750 A.U.C. (4 B.C.), which seems
closer to the truth.

> Before that western Europeans dated events by King-years.

Actually, it wasn't until hundreds of years after Dionysius Exiguus
that A.D. reckoning gained that much general usage, and British laws
were dated by year of the monarch's reign up into the twentieth
century.
--
         --Henry Churchyard     churchyh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu

