• For years between 30 to 39 AD you say: 30's

  • For years between 20 to 29 AD you say: 20's

  • For years between 10 to 19 AD you say: 10's

  • But what about the years between 0 to 9 AD?

    Is it 0's?

Note: There are two entries in Wikipedia about 0s BC: The period between 9 BC and 1 BC.1 and 0s: about the first nine years of the AD/CE calendar era (AD 1–9) 2

  • 1
    I wonder if you could use the term naughts, but this refers to such a narrow window of time that one doesn't run across it very often. I'm not aware of any common, standard expression. – J.R. Jun 5 '18 at 20:12

There was no 0AD, the years went straight from 1BC to 1AD.

We don't refer to the years of the first century like this. We don't call the years 20AD-29AD as the twenties. If we ever do refer it, we would say something like "the third decade of the first century". So 1AD -10AD would be "the first decade". Perhaps you could use "the first decade of the common era."

We do talk about the years 1920-1929 as the "twenties", and so on. There is no generally agreed on abbreviation for the years 2000-2009 and 2010-2019. Though the "aughts" and "noughties" has been proposed for 2000-2009

Here is a comic about this

  • But there is an article in Wikipedia about 0s BC. – Peace Jun 5 '18 at 20:23
  • en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_zero. The wikipedia page 0sBC is part of a series of automatically generated pages one per decade. It is chosen for consistency with other pages, rather than reflecting common usage. – James K Jun 5 '18 at 20:34

Your Answer

