After Death or Anno Domini?

In the Western calendar, we have three distinct forms for talking about epochs, AD, BC, and CE. All three are used with reference to the time of Jesus. BC is the time before Jesus was born, and hence expands to "before Christ".

While "before Christ" is pretty meaningful, many expanded AD naturally as "After Death". But this isn't true. AD stands actually for a Latin phrase, "anno Domini", which translates as "in the year of the Lord".

About one and a half millennia ago, a Romanian priest and scholar, St. Dionysius Exiguus caused this convention.

One more thing you need to notice is AD is usually prefixed to the year, while BC is suffixed, as in: AD 500, and 43 BC.

In BC epoch, the years are decreasing, so 54 BC comes before 3 BC. It decreases to 1 BC, and then starts the AD epoch, with AD 1.

Another convention to talk about the current epoch, called the Common Era, CE, was started by atheistic scholars and writers who felt that talking about eons needn't have a direct reference to Christianity, which represents only a part of the human population. They also put forth, BCE, which stands for the original BC, and expands to "Before Common Era".

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