Would I be correct in suggesting that the term A.D. actually stands for "Anno Domini" rather than "After Death", or are they one in the same?

MonkeyOnALeash

They do have the same connotation but "After Death" is the dumbed-down way of conveying the meaning of Anno Domini which means the Year of The Lord. Give or take. Here is the problem... If B.C. means Before Christ and A.D. means After Death then there is a 33 year period that is not accounted for! Therefore A.D. HAS TO mean the year in which the Lord was born. Hence Anno Domini. http://www.sfu.ca/archaeology/museum/detectiv/bcad.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/time/g/AD.htm http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/referenceencyclopedia/g/glbce.htm Dec 08 07, 5:54 AM

MonkeyOnALeash

A further note: Anno Domini as it is defined is not the actual year in which The Christ was born although that is the definition of the term. There is a few years discrepancy. Dec 08 07, 6:01 PM

Baloo55th

The term CE uses the same numbering as AD, but avoids the Christian connotations for those of us that are not Christian. To us it's just a starting point for the count with no other special significance. Dec 08 07, 7:08 PM

star_gazer

CE stands for the "Common Era", and BCE stands for "Before the Common Era". These initials are also prefered within the scientific communities. Dec 08 07, 8:53 PM

queproblema

It might help to add that when Dionysius Exiguus devised the "Anno Domini" term in the year of the consulship of Probus Junior, known to us as A.D. 525 or 525 BCE, English was still in the Anglo-Saxon stage, unintelligible to us, and the people who spoke it were pagans. Therefore, "A.D." could not possibly have originally meant "after death." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons#Religion Also, other languages have their own abbreviations for "before Christ," "after Christ," (not "after death"), "before common era," etc. In Spanish it comes out to AC and DC. :-) BRY2K, you might enjoy reading up on various ways people have kept track of years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology Dec 09 07, 3:00 AM