Common Era

The Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) constitute a pair of secular year notations used to identify years within the Gregorian calendar and, historically, the Julian calendar. These systems are numerically identical to the older Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC) framework, with CE corresponding to AD and BCE to BC. Although the terminology differs, the chronological structure remains the same: for example, 400 BCE designates the same year as 400 BC. The CE/BCE notation arose from a desire for more religiously neutral terminology and has gained widespread acceptance in academic, scientific, and multicultural contexts.

Historical Background and Origins

The underlying calendar era employed by both CE/BCE and AD/BC originates from the work of Dionysius Exiguus, a Christian monk active in the early sixth century. Around the year 525, Dionysius sought to compute a new table for determining the date of Easter. In place of the Era of the Martyrs—then commonly used in ecclesiastical calculations—he introduced a dating system beginning with what he believed to be the birth year of Jesus. His aim was, in part, to avoid referencing a persecutor of Christians in the calendar framework used for liturgical purposes.
Dionysius labelled his newly calculated years as “the years of our Lord Jesus Christ”, thereby inaugurating the Anno Domini era. The system gradually gained acceptance, particularly after its adoption by the English scholar Bede in 731. Bede was influential not only in promoting the AD system but also in establishing the practice of dating years preceding the supposed year of Jesus’s birth, albeit without a year zero. Through Bede’s writings, the AD system spread widely across medieval Europe and ultimately became the dominant chronological standard of Western Christendom.

Development of the Term Vulgar Era and Early Secular Usage

The earliest linguistic antecedents of the phrase Common Era appear in the usage of Vulgar Era, from the Latin aera vulgaris, meaning “the era of the common people”. In early modern English, the term “vulgar” referred to ordinary or popular usage and carried no negative connotations. It was employed to distinguish the everyday civil calendar from regnal year dating, in which years were counted according to the reign of a monarch—a convention prevalent in official and legal documents.
The expression aera vulgaris occurs in the work of the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the early seventeenth century. Kepler used the Latin phrase in astronomical tables published from 1615 onwards, and an English edition of his work from 1635 contains what may be the earliest example of the English term Vulgar Era on a title page. By the early eighteenth century, British dictionaries, almanacs, and historical texts increasingly adopted the phrase.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, authors began to use Common Era, Christian Era, and Vulgar Era interchangeably. In some contexts, Common Era appeared simply as a descriptive term for any dating system widely employed within a culture. Thus, references emerged to the “common era of the Jews”, “common era of the Mahometans”, or other civilisations, demonstrating that the term had not yet settled into its modern, singular meaning.

Emergence and Consolidation of Common Era and Before the Common Era

The phrase Common Era in its modern sense appears in English at least as early as 1708. By the mid-nineteenth century, it gained prominence among Jewish scholars, whose preference for a non-Christocentric dating system encouraged its adoption. A related abbreviation, VE for Vulgar Era, was in use among Jewish communities by the early nineteenth century, reflecting continued interchange between the expressions.
The term Before the Common Era emerged later, with examples found in English translations of German works from the 1770s. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Common Era, Christian Era, and Vulgar Era were frequently treated as synonyms, and early encyclopaedias maintained this equivalence. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909, for example, notes that all three phrases were widely understood at the time.
In the twentieth century, the term Common Era gained further traction as academic and scientific communities sought neutral language that avoided explicit reference to Christian doctrine. Some esoteric groups adopted Latin forms such as vulgaris aera or adapted variants like e.v. (Era Vulgaris), but these remained niche usages.

Secularisation and Reasons for Adoption

The principal impetus for replacing AD and BC with CE and BCE lies in the shift towards secular, pluralistic, and globally accessible scholarship. While AD abbreviates the Latin Anno Domini (“in the year of our Lord”), CE carries no religious implication. Likewise, BCE avoids explicit reference to Christ. This neutrality has proven significant in fields such as archaeology, anthropology, religious studies, and history, where cross-cultural objectivity is valued.
Advocates argue that CE/BCE:

• avoids privileging a single religious tradition in academic writing;
• aligns with inclusive and multicultural educational aims;
• maintains full numerical continuity with the established dating system, preventing confusion.

Critics, however, contend that replacing AD/BC is unnecessary given that the underlying epoch—the supposed birth year of Jesus—remains unchanged. Some also argue that altering terminology without altering the dating system itself creates a superficial neutrality.

Use in Judaism, Education, Scholarship, and Public Institutions

The CE/BCE notation has long been employed in Jewish scholarship owing to Judaism’s non-recognition of Jesus as the Messiah. The Gregorian calendar is widely used for practical purposes, but many Jewish writers historically omitted explicitly Christian abbreviations. For over a century, CE and BCE have appeared in Hebrew language textbooks and academic materials.
In contemporary scholarship, usage varies by discipline. Some professional associations, such as the American Anthropological Association, support CE/BCE in their style guidelines, viewing the terminology as consistent with international academic norms. Others, including the Society for Historical Archaeology, prefer the traditional BC/AD notation in publications while allowing CE/BCE in specialised scientific contexts such as radiocarbon dating.
Educational policy in various countries has also addressed the issue. In Australia, public discussion in 2011 suggested that schools might universally adopt CE/BCE, though authorities later clarified that both systems could be used, and BC/AD remained standard. In Canada, national museums have alternated between the two systems depending on whether materials were intended for public or academic audiences. In Nepal, CE/BCE is widely used to distinguish Gregorian dates from those expressed in the Vikram Sambat calendar, whose epoch closely aligns with the Common Era.
Within the United Kingdom, an advisory panel for religious education recommended CE/BCE for schools in 2002, and by 2018 several local authorities had adopted the practice. Nonetheless, some heritage organisations, including the National Trust, continue to use BC/AD as their preferred house style.

Linguistic and Cultural Variations

Despite English-speaking regions being central to the development of CE/BCE, similar distinctions appear in other languages. Some communities translate Common Era into locally meaningful terms or adapt the abbreviation to suit linguistic norms. Although CE/BCE has become widely accepted in international academic work, the choice of notation often reflects cultural, religious, or institutional preference.

Contemporary Significance

The Common Era framework remains fundamentally linked to the chronology developed in late antiquity and refined through medieval scholarship. The introduction of CE/BCE has not altered the structure of the calendar but has reframed its terminology in a way that better suits modern pluralistic societies. As global academic collaboration increases, CE/BCE continues to offer a neutral and widely intelligible system that preserves historical continuity while accommodating the cultural diversity of contemporary scholarship.