Can someone explain why AD is in Latin and BC is English?

[twinsetandpearls]

I am posting this rather nervously as Humanities teachers are getting a bit of a pasting on anther thread

In my defence I have said I do not know and have asked the class to try and find out, but I need to know.

Wow I was wondering exactly the same thing about two hours ago Don't know the answer though Sorry.

Thanks CharChar

One of my year sevens said it was because the Christian era is represented by a Christian language latin.

I found this explanation on google.

I would have thought that as Anno Domini stands for "Year of our Lord" and BC for "Before Christ," the latin version of BC would have been Ante Christo (not recommended!) or Ante Domino (same initials).

But a long time since I did Latin and I always was shite.

lol at Ante Christo.

Thanks for the link LadyGlencora I will keep looking and will hunt through my books having given my classes a lecture on not relying on google and thinking about the reliability and bias of websites.

bump while I go to the library.

I found the following explanation:

Anno Domini
Anno Domini (Latin for In the Year of the Lord), or more completely Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi (The Years of Our Lord Jesus Christ), commonly abbreviated "A.D.", refers to the conventional numbering of years in the Gregorian calendar. It defines an epoch based on the traditionally reckoned year of the birth of Jesus Christ. Years before the epoch were denoted A.C.N. (for Ante Christi Natus, Latin for "before the birth of Christ"), although B.C. ("Before Christ") is now usually used in English. The A.D. era is the only system in everyday use in the Western hemisphere, and the main system for commercial and scientific use in the rest of the world. Many non-Christians object to a system based upon an event in the Christian faith. Some use the same system, replacing Anno Domini with Common Era (abbreviated "C.E."). (CE has also been used as an abbreviation for Christian Era.)

It came from this web page

Any use? Seems as if it has just changed as people preferred it, although I would still suspect the reason might have been that the ante-christi bit put the willies up some people.

Thanks Balloon slayer.

...and BCE (Before Common Era is replacing BC)

Yes know about the BCE and CE, we were doing some date sorting last lesson and I had a mixture of BC, BCE, CE and AD and one of the children just asked why AD and BC and I could not give a confident answer.

Some interesting stuff on Wikipedia for what it is worth:
The Anglo-Saxon historian Bede the Venerable, who was familiar with the work of Dionysius, also used Anno Domini dating in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, finished in 731. In this same history, he was the first to use the Latin equivalent of before Christ and established the standard for historians of no year zero, even though he used zero in his computus. Both Dionysius and Bede regarded Anno Domini as beginning at the incarnation of Jesus, but "the distinction between Incarnation and Nativity was not drawn until the late 9th century, when in some places the Incarnation epoch was identified with Christ's conception, i.e., the Annunciation on March 25" (Annunciation style).[13]

On the continent of Europe, Anno Domini was introduced as the era of choice of the Carolingian Renaissance by Alcuin. This endorsement by Emperor Charlemagne and his successors popularizing the usage of the epoch and spreading it throughout the Carolingian Empire ultimately lies at the core of the system's prevalence until present times.

Outside the Carolingian Empire, Spain continued to date by the Era of the Caesars, or Spanish Era, which began counting from 38 BC, well into the Middle Ages,. The Era of Martyrs, which numbered years from the accession of Diocletian in 284, who launched the last yet most severe persecution of Christians, was used by the Church of Alexandria, and is still used officially by the Coptic church. It also used to be used by the Ethiopian church. Another system was to date from the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which as early as Hippolytus and Tertullian was believed to have occurred in the consulate of the Gemini (AD 29), which appears in the occasional medieval manuscript.

Even though Anno Domini was in widespread use by the 9th century, Before Christ (or its equivalent) did not become widespread until the late 15th century.[14]

Basically AD was only devised in the sixth century and BC didn't come into use until nearly a thousand years later.