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:
“Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)