Why every thousand years is it called a millenium???

Question

Thought millenium was every million years??

Answer 1

Its based on the Metric system. The milli prefix means thousands. There are one thousand "millimeters" in a meter. That is why is is called a millenium. Just like a century is 100 years. There are 100 "centimeters" in a meter. Same basic prefix.

Answer 2

Because Milli is used in measures of length liquid etc to identofy a thousand. E.g millimetre where it's a thousandth of a metre.
So Millenium is a thosand anums
Anums = years

Answer 3

A millennium (pl. millennia) is a period of time, equal to one thousand years (from Latin mille, thousand, and annum, year). The term may implicitly refer to calendar millennia; periods tied numerically to a particular dating system, specifically ones that begin at the starting (initial reference) point of the calendar in question (typically the year 0 or the year 1) or in later years which are whole number multiples of a thousand years after it. This concept is the one primarily discussed in this article.

The term can also refer to an interval of time beginning on any date. Frequently in the latter case (and sometimes also in the former) it may have religious or theological implications (see Millenarianism). Especially in religious usage such an interval may be interpreted less precisely, being not necessarily exactly 1,000 years long.

The original method of counting years was ordinal, whether 1st year A.D. or regnal 10th year of King Henry VIII. This ordinal numbering is still present in the names of the millennia and centuries, for example 1st Millennium or the 20th century, and sometimes in the names of decades, e.g. 1st decade of the 21st century.

In recent years, most people have moved to expressing individual years as cardinal numbers, for example 1945 or 1998. The usage 1999th year A.D. is no longer found. This follows scientific usage, for example astronomical year numbering. As a result, some other calendar names have also moved to cardinals, e.g. 1980s is an acceptable name for a particular decade. However, 1600s could be understood as either a decade or a century.

The common Western calendar, i.e. the Gregorian calendar, lacks a year numbered zero and begins instead with the year 1. For others, the year zero exists since 1582, with the changes introduced by the Papacy. Accordingly, each period of 1000 years concludes at the end of a year with three zeroes, e.g. the first thousand years in the Western calendar included the year 1000. However, there are two viewpoints about how millennia should be thought of in practice, one which relies on the formal operation of the calendar and one which appeals to other notions that attract popular sentiment.

There was a popular debate leading up to the celebrations of the year 2000 as to whether the beginning of that year should be understood (and celebrated) as the beginning of a new millennium. Historically, there has been debate around the turn of previous decades, centuries, and millennia.

The "year 2000" has also been a popular phrase referring to an often utopian future, or a year when stories in such a future were set, adding to its cultural significance. There was also media and public interest in the Y2K bug. Thus, the populist argument was that the new millennium should begin when the zeroes of 2000 "rolled over", i.e. December 31, 1999. People felt that the change of hundred digit in the year number, and the zeros rolling over, created a sense that a new century had begun. This is similar to the common demarcation of decades by their most significant digits, e.g. naming the period 1980 to 1989 as the 1980s or "the eighties". Similarly, it would be valid to celebrate the year 2000 as a cultural event in its own right, and name the period 2000 to 2999 as "the 2000s".

Most historians agree that Dionysius nominated Christ's birth as 25th December of the year before AD 1 (ref History Today June 1999 p60 Letters, Darian Hiles: "Of Dates and Decimals"). This corresponded with the belief that the birth year itself was considered too holy to mention. Similarly in AD 1000 the church actively discouraged any mention of that year and in modern times it labelled AD 2000 as the "Jubilee Year 2000" marking the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ. Year 0 has always been there, it just didn't have a name in the AD system. Thus the unnamed year 0 marked the start of the first Christian millennium, 1000 the second and 2000 the third.

The majority popular approach was to treat the end of 1999 as the end of a millennium, and to hold millennium celebrations at midnight through December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000, as per viewpoint 2. The cultural and psychological significance of the events listed above combined to cause celebrations to be observed one year earlier than the formal Gregorian date. This does not, of course, establish that insistence on the formal Gregorian date is "incorrect", though it is widely viewed as pedantic (as in the comment of Douglas Adams mentioned below).

Some event organisers hedged their bets by calling their 1999 celebrations things like "Click" referring to the odometer like rolling over of the nines to zeros.

Answer 4

Every thousand years is called a millennium because the root word for millennium is mille meaning thousand and nium from annum meaning year so millennium meaning thousand years.

Answer 5

the prefix 'mille' or 'milli' means one thousand, that is why 1 milligram means one thousandth of a gram, or 1 milliliter is one thousandth of a liter. The suffix for a million is 'micro.' Try not to get confused : )

Answer 6

Probably from Italian or Latin - something like MILLI meaning a thousand - thus, millennium, possibly Latin for a thousand years.

Answer 7

Every thousand years is called a millennium because that is the definition of the word 'millennium'.

Why didn't you just look this up in a dictionary? You would have caught your misspelling of the word, as well.

Answer 8

comes from latin and it means thousand years literally.
look to other ways that the suffix mill- is used. In latin languages it literally means thousand, like french ''mille'' or italian ''mille'' or ''mila''. In science, milli before a number means one thousandth of that number.

Answer 9

From the Latin:-Mille=Thousand and Annum =Year..

Answer 10

Mil is spanish for 1000. It comes from the Latin counting system.