Why does history use (for example) "the 18th century" instead of "the 1700s"?

Well I say “the 18th century” because it took me ages to finally remember which way the number went when you referred to the century. Once it came naturally I loved to roll it off in conversation over cigars and brandy. You know, before talk turns to hare coursing, but after all the women have left.

Well, I know that sometimes wording like “the 1700s” refers to the decade of 1700–1709 instead of the entire century.

Well, the first century was 1–100, the second century was 101–200, and so on. If the second century were the first century, what would the first century be?

Pure speculation here, but I wonder if this custom is a carry-over from the time when recording dates as Roman numerals was more common. The concept of, say, “the thirteen hundreds” is really tied to the Arabic notation, with its system of “places”.

The French will still use Roman notation for centuries, e.g. “XVIIeme siecle” (the 17th century).

@iphigeneia Lol no I get why the first century is the first century, just not why we refer to it so often that way. Thought @DominicX and @fundevogel both make good points.

@thorninmud I think Arabic numerals became big about a century or two before using the AD dating system did. So they wouldn’t have spent much time writing dates in Roman numerals in the first place.

@Aethelflaed Wikipedia makes this observation about Roman numerals:

In the 14th century, Roman numerals were largely abandoned in favor of Arabic numerals; however, they are still used to this day in minor applications…The Catalan, Croatian, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish languages use capital Roman numerals to denote centuries (e.g., XVIII refers to the eighteenth century).

Clearly, we don’t still use them for the same purpose in English, but I’m suggesting that the use of the Roman numerals for this purpose in many major European languages may have shaped the custom of numbering the centuries instead of refering to a range of dates.

@Aethelflaed oh, right, misunderstood the question XD

I’m quite certain there’s not a big reason. It might have to do with Roman numerals, but @DominicX makes a good point about why it remains the preferred term.

i don’t suppose there would be a zero’th century.

@majorrich Reread the details.

I was responding to @iphigeneia

It’s a communist plot long designed to make Rick Perry look stupid

@filmfann LOL see, that’s what I’m talking about!!!! Ricky Perry could have avoided this by simply saying “1700s”. And being more well-versed in history, because actually, “17th century” would have at least made sense, though still be incorrect. But 16th century? No matter how you spin it, there’s no 16 in there. 18(th century), yes, 16, no.