A regnal year is a year of the reign of a sovereign, from the Latin regnum meaning kingdom, rule.
The oldest dating systems were in regnal years, and considered the date as an ordinal, not a cardinal number. For example, a monarch could have a first year of rule, a second year of rule, a third, and so on, but a zero year of rule would be nonsense. Applying this ancient epoch system to modern calculations of time, which include zero, is what led to the debate over when the third millennium began.
Read more about Regnal Year: Reckoning in Various Cultures, Asian Era Names, Notable King Lists
Famous quotes containing the word year:
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)