BC/AD or BCE/CE? 

2 videos in the same month, what's going on?! In this video I look a topic which is surprisingly controversial: BC/AD or BCE/CE? As stated in the video, I received backlash for using BCE/CE in a video in 2017. While some of the comments were needlessly insulting, many also raised some interesting points. The more I looked into the subject, the more I began to come around to the opinion that BCE/CE seems unnecessary, and doesn't really do what it set out to do - remove reference to Christianity. I'm interested to hear some of your thoughts and opinions on the matter. I know many think that this is a complete non-issue, and yeah, that's fair. I don't really think it's all that big of a deal, but I thought it was interesting topic at the least. Link to orginial video that made me aware of this whole controversey: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nx4VdNPhV-4.html Thanks for watching!

I propose a compromise. We should use either: BCE/AD or BC/CE That way we piss off everyone and we can all be miserable together.

In Russian it's simply "before our era" and "our era", if directly translated. wait OH GOD DAMN IT THIS WAS AN UNINTENTIONAL COMMUNIST JOKE

nah. -2019 and +2019. easy.

Just waiting for everyone else to catch up to my level and use BBY/ABY.

"Backwards Chronology" and "Ascending Dates" is actually really clever! Names the years AND explains the separation in one.

I use AC⚡DC because Im Thunderstruck

"Just look at the days of the week. Most are named after Roman or Greek deities." Norse gods: Am I a joke to you?

Everyone at 8:35, "Who writes the letter E that way!?" Me at 8:35, "Hey you idiot, Henry VIII had six wives, not seven!"

I personally prefer AC/DC

2 videos in 2 weeks?? Wonderwhy is on a roll!

8:35 who tf writes an E like that lol.

I propose: Before Ya Boi(B.Y.B) After Ya Boi(A.Y.B)

I thought it was about Tesla and Edison rivalry and AC/DC

What year is it? 356 BC? What BC mean? Before Christ Who's Christ? I don't know

Neil degrass Tyson talks about this on Joe Rogan. He uses BC/AD because the Catholic church created it and that's what THEY used. He also recognizes that it is an impressive marvel of science (the calendar) and so the people who created it should get credit

As a dinosaur person, I'm more familiar of MYA.

And then Kurzgesagt tries to popularize the holocene era calendar. Edit: popularize is a better term than introduce.

One point I'm glad you brought up is how saying BCE/CE repeatedly can trip someone up, while there's little confusion when someone says "BC" vs "AD." There's also the fact that BC/AD flows better. By contrast, while saying "BCE" or "CE" the speaker has to make an awkward voice stop between the "cee" sound and the "ee" sound.

If you're going to use Christ's birth as a starting point, you might as well use BC/AD and refer to Christ.

AC/DC in portuguese!!! ("Antes de Cristo"/"Depois de Cristo"). 'cos we rock, of course!

I had no idea about the use of "christ/Christ" as a title as opposed to a name. Fascinating

Lmao I was taught that BCE and CE also meant Before Christ Era and Christ Era.

Little kids: learn positive and negative numbers in elementary school Grown ups: still debate over BC/AD or BCE/CE as if it was even important

I only use BC/AD because it's what I originally learned, and I actually agree with the sentiment that BCE/CE is a poor attempt at fixing a problem I think doesn't exist. That being said, I have no problem with others using BCE/CE, just please don't yell at me for using BC/AD.

I wrote a paper that switch between them my teacher got angry and said "just use one I dont care witch one but one!" It was pretty funny.

I'm an atheist and couldn't care less about the Christian reference.... I'll choose BC/AD every time.

I always went with BCE/CE in high school (despite being a religious school) as a pretty secular person myself, but honestly this video made me realise just how unnecessary and forced that change is. It does seem incredibly disrespectful of the early Christian scholars who devoted their lives to historical records, with the only motivation to change being Jews and modern atheists (like myself for that matter). Seems like a similar issue to saying 'Prophet Muhammad' when talking about the Muslim prophet, I'm not a Muslim but it still seems like a necessary sign of respect for history and religion.

BC can just mean "Before Common (Era)" and AD can just mean "After Dat"

BC/AD or BCE and CE.Forget that the year is 2772 AUC. Long live the Roman Empire.

If we're honest, the only way of counting time that really matters is milliseconds since the unix epoch

Here in Israel we use them but call them after counting and before counting

I prefer BC/AD because I'm lazy and it requires less effort to say or type.

Wow what an upgrade in your editing. Great video as always Wonder Why.

Thanks for this! great voice too! LOVE your accent! Could listen to you for hours

"the days of the week... are mostly named after roman or greek deities." sunday, monday, thursday, and friday: am i a joke to you?

I use them interchangeably and I really don't care at all.

Last time I was this early, WonderWhy uploaded twice a year.

AD does get confused with After Death. When I was young I had a teacher give us a math problem. How many years between 10 BC and 10 AD. I answered 20. The answer she wanted was 53 as Jesus lived 33 years. I disagreed and this led to a discussion with the Principle who didn't know the teacher was teaching this. This was in a public school.

Ahhh Lindybeige! Also, when I first heard 'Common Era' about 5 years ago, it was BCE and ACE, eventually they must have removed the A.

Is a year like, a week now?

BTW in case you're curious about the days of the week: Sunday - Obviously, Sun day. Monday - Moon day Tuesday - Tiw's day (Norse god) Wednesday - Woden's day (Odin's day, Norse god) Thursday - Thor's day (Norse god) Friday - Freya's day (Norse goddess) Saturday - Saturn day (Roman god)

My mother is an academic historian and archaeologist and she uses BC/AD in both her teaching, academic and other work. She finds the use of the phrase "common era" troubling (and has written about that) and thinks the BCE/CE thing is a ridiculous attempt to politicise a system that doesn't warrant it.

I personally agree with the "changing the names doesn't change the fact that it's based on Christ" school of thought. That being said, I am Catholic, so I may have some bias

I prefer B.C. and A.D., but I don’t mind B.C.E. and C.E., because it’s just the same numbered years with different names for eras.

AC/DC in Italian - Avanti (before) Cristo/Dopo (after) Cristo. Or just get back to use Rome's foundation as the beginning.. 753 BC.

BC/AD even tho im not religous im just used to it

Changing the term AD to CE and yet still basing the system's zero year on Jesus is mental.

lmao people really have nothing important to worry about?

*Changing the initials but keeping the numerical division barely makes a dent on the calendar's connection to Jesus Christ of Nazareth.*

Also remember for a while some European nations used their own calendar that was completely separate from their neighbors and it was a long while before the Julian calendar (and the Gregorian (Russia was the last to switch and that was in 1918!)) were widely used.

I prefer BC and AD because there are fewer syllables and sharpness to get around. If the years hit the quintuple digits (Or WWIII destroys everything), we should have a new dating system that abbreviates to EY or something.

Honestly B.C and A.D are just to classic for me to give up.

Just use BC and AD. We all know why and when BC starts and BC starts.

Could divide the years by Eras. Like, Prehistory, go up to a number, then stop there, and start a new Era when one rises, like the Iron age or something. For example, we'd count the Information Era years since the fall of the Soviet Union. Then, when we start to advance further, we'd go into a new Era.

I'm surprised you got so muchflack, appreciate this video. I am Jewish, and use BCE/CE, also built the habit in college and grad school as both my degree are in the social sciences. Curiously when I was studying anthropology, many in the field used a Before Present (BP) system, so if you were talking about something in 11,000 BCE, it was 13,000 BP. Granted then everything is just so many years before today. Personally I am a fan of the human era calendar, as it begins counting at the very beginning of the development of settled life, so encompasses all of human civilization, but still has a weird backwards chronology to deal with. I am a proponent of changing that, as that's not how we count, and I feel it makes it easier for people to kind of ignore everything which happened before some arbitrary date because those times were leading up to it, and people seem to value it less. All of history is important and should be celebrated. Anyway these are my thoughts, and I encourage people to use more inclusive language, but mostly to question why things are as they are, don't blindly accept something "because it's always been that way." Trust me, it hasn't .

Alternately, just use negative numbers for BC/BCE.

I cringed when i saw someone commented you being heretic for not using B.C./A.D.

I suggest BC/AD over BCE/CE because it saves one letter, which in the larger scheme of it all saves a lot on inkt and digital storage. Which would be better our resources.

HOW. COME. i'VE. JUST. COME. ACROSS. YOUR. CHANNEL? DAMN, I GOTTA HIT THAT SUBSCRIBED BUTTON!

I'm Muslim and I don't mind using Christian era. On one hand I'm not saying a blasphemy by saying its the "year of our lord" but on the other hand I'm acknowledging where this calendar comes from.

Why do people care? The "common era" is still based on Christianity. It's literally impossible to avoid the religious aspect of it. So it doesn't matter. You can't make this Politically Correct. Why get salty if its said either way? The two term sets are interchangeable.

Just sharing, reading a book on fashion history brought me here. Who knew. Thanks for sharing and educating.

If you ask me this year is 27 AF (after formation) and "1991" is 1 BF (before formation) referring to Blink-182!

It's interesting. Where I come from (Ukraine), we say 'our era' and 'before our era'. There is, however, a pretty outdated way to say anno Domini in ukrainian, but it is not used widely (especially after soviet years). In schools we are taught to use BC/AD in English. So it was a bit confusing for me to see BCE/CE for the first time:)

If we really want to fix the system, we've simply got to do one thing: embrace negative numbers. 2019 AD would simply become 2019, and 2019 BC would become -2018. Why is it off by one? Because year 0 needs to exist for the system to make sense, and it doesn't currently exist. So 1 BC becomes 0, and 2 BC becomes -1, and so on. Then, figuring out how much time there was between dates would get a lot simpler - you just subtract them, following the normal rules of arithmetic that when you subtract a negative number, you add a positive number. And figuring out date ranges that include the BC/AD crossover would become a lot easier: instead of remembering a special rule that you add them together and then subtract 1, you just follow the same arithmetic rules you've learned in elementary school. And this would also strengthen and connect our intuition about both negative numbers and BC/BCE dates, since they both count "backwards" as you go forwards in time. This also easily admits any kind of offset in the zero point we want to choose; it has been suggested (and I think it's a good idea) to add 10,000 offset so that the year zero is approximately coincidental with the Agricultural Revolution and the dawn of the earliest human civilizations, such that 2019 AD becomes 12019. And for prehistoric times, we've got negative numbers. Seems like it works pretty well to me!

My main thing with this issue is the fact that BCE/CE is secular, academic notation while it still acknowledges a religious event as the one point of human history important enough to split human history into two distinct eras. I say, either find an event that all academics can agree was important, and set that event as Year Zero for BCE/CE notation, or just go back to using the religious notation of BC/AD. That's what I like about the Holocene calendar. It sets Year Zero at an event that marked a monumental achievement which all people can appreciate as part of their history, while also maintaining relative consistency with Western religious calendars by simply adding exactly 10,000 years to the calendar date. For example, AD 2020 on the Gregorian calendar is 12020 HE (human era) on the Holocene calendar. Likewise, 11000 BC on the Gregorian calendar is 1000 BHE (before the human era) on the Holocene calendar

In my language is pretty basically "Before count" "To count" to say before we started counting and now as we are counting (the years).

The fact that this apparently consists as a controversial topic is, to me, baffling and a waste of breath. Barry's Tea vs Lyons Tea is a more worthwhile argument, and they are both black Bengal tea

I say BC and CE because BC is easier to say than BCE and CE because I actually know what it means

_Poor me who wasn't born in a english contry so I had no Idea of the existence of BCE or CE_

Wow you are quite good with potentially touchy subjects. 👍 Great job presenting the info fairly and thoroughly.

We here say Old Era and New Era

I usually use AD instead of CE because, despite it being the "Common Era," it's not as common as people make it out to be. There are still cultures which use different calendars with different epochs to our own. We use Anno Domini to distinguish it from other epochs, like Anno Mundi, Anno Hegiræ, and Anno Urbis Conditæ, among others.

I believe we should have kept PUC/AUC or "Pre urbe condita" and "ad urbe condita" which means before and after the foundation of the City (or Rome)

I have not been swayed from my long-held position that this whole debate is pointless and caring about it is stupid

What’s the difference between “Colored People” and “People of Color”? Aside from the latter sounding like a poor translation of the former?

As someone who studied ancient history, I was frequently reading "the x-th year of the reign of King such-and-such." Since Jesus became "king of mankind," I noticed the system of kings and years eventually disappeared. Although Jesus is not my king, using AD/BC is a much simpler system, and I don't have a problem sticking to that. (As a side note, big thanks to all the people who somehow converted that old system to AD/BC.)

When you pointed out that BCE/CE doesn't remove us from christianity since we use the same numbers, that reminded me of one of my earlier professors, who wanted the system to change so that we are now in the year 10019. This would make more sence in the view of an historian, and still be easy to remember and get used to, since still using the last part of the old system (the "19" part). Is this a good idea maybe, or just crazy/stupid.

Who's for converting it all to the Chinese calendar? There's only 12 years to remember there (although knowing me I'd still be writing "Monkey" on my checks when we're already two months into the Year of the Rooster). : /

There is a perfectly viable solution to this, called negative and positive numbers. I find it way easier to understand the year "-100" than "100 BC"

CE/BCE is just the secular version of BC/AD. Many cultures have their own calendar and it's fine to make a universal one, but don't erase a cultural calendar to do it.

i just want to use bc and ad because that is what i have always known and its just shorter.

The months of the year used to be 10, but after augustus and julius, they added august and july

The problem with using BCE-CE as a secular way of organising dates is that it still relies on the birth of Jesus as the defining event between the previous and current era. Regardless of which system is used, our way of organising history is still defined by the events of Christianity.

I always thought BCE was Before Christ Existence and CE was Christ Existence :/

6:52 why is the ם so long?

You can use either, it doesn’t matter really. It’s just your choice both are correct. But in my school we use bc and ad. So yeah either is right. Great video by the way.

Wow, did you suddenly learn Adobe After Effects? This video has a lot of nice animations and there is a very noticeable improvement in the general video editing quality here.

in my language we just use for example -1200 when we talk about years before our calender

When it comes to videos on other religions I propose displaying both BC/AD as well as the year in that religions calender. This gives an insight to how that religion sees time.

Oh and people seem to forget the Gregorian calendar is really just the Julian calendar, the calendar of Rome modified for the first 2 Caesars of course (and Christian year counting too), with Gregory's change of adding in leap year to stabilize it and keep important church holidays from drifting into other seasons as was beginning to happen by the 16th-17th centuries. Plus it wasn't fully adopted in Western Europe until the second half of the 18th century, and not fully in Europe until the Russian Revolution in 1917, as the Russian Empire stuck with the Julian calendar as it was also the Russian Orthodox Church calendar as given to them by the Byzantine Empire. Protestant Europe didn't want a calendar from Catholic Rome, so clearly nothing is a predetermined outcome, and history could have easily gone another way.

I'll give you another two good reasons to keep using BC and AD. 1. Before watching this video I really didn't know what BCE and CE meant or stood for. This may have something to do with the second VERY good reason to stick with BC and AD 2. BCE and CE are abreviations of English terms!! I've been living in France for 20 years and hardly anyone you'd ask would know what these terms mean HOWEVER EVERYONE would know the term AD which is a Latin derived term. I'd say this would be the case in nearly all non English speaking places. SO to stay truly international (and understood for that matter) KEEP USING AD ;).

As a non native english speaker I prefer BC/AD sicne anno domini is more of an international term (can be seen on old buildings for example). I actually hadn't even heard about BCE/CE before this video.

I think that BCE / CE is good to teach with in public schools as it feels less ‘political’ but students should also know about BC/AD to understand the origin and the meaning behind the dates and how we record history in the way we do

I'm tempted to walk to my nearest church to see if the AD comes before or after the year the church was built.

So the same people who complain about BCE and CE are the ones who complain about people calling Christmas, Xmas.

When I was learning my history from empire earth, whenever I saw BCE or BC, I just added a minus in front of the year, and called 3000 BC just the year -3000. I think that is just a way nicer solution, however I can see the issue that as far as I know we didn't have AD 0 year, because we went from 1 BC to 1 AD. This is the reason the numberline is not that practical. I could be wrong about it though.

I'm gonna go for BC/AD cos i think it looks good to have the letters ABCD rearranged, and CE/BCE looks weird

In German, there is a similar thing going on but hardly anyone uses the non-christian version. We either have a v. Chr/n. Chr (vor Christus/nach Christus) system and the non-religious v. u. Z / d. Z. (vor unserer Zeitrechnung/der Zeitrechnung) which was as far as I know mostly used in East Germany for obvious reasons. However, we tend to leave the letters away if were talking about AD-years except if we're talking about e. g. emperor Augustus (reigned from 11 BC to AD 14). We even tend to leave away the letters if it's clear from context that we're talking about BC-years, in Ancient Greek class we just say the numbers and everyone knows that the year numbers count backwards.