What to Call the New Year?

The first decade of this century presented a bit of a challenge in terms of deciding how to refer to any given year.  What seems to have emerged as a sort of consensus was to use the word "thousand" in the name.  Thus, "Two thousand, Two thousand one, Two thousand two..."  Perhaps part of this is due to the success of the old sci-fi movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, since everybody pronounced that title as "Two thousand one, a space odyssey."  So using the word "thousand" became ingrained in the general consciousness.  In addition, omitting the thousand and using 20th century naming conventions could lead to a word with ambiguous meanings.  Thus, saying "twenty-one" suggests 21, not 2001, and "twenty-oh-one" sounds odd.

But once we're past 2009, saying "twenty ten" sounds just find. 

Note that we didn't have this problem with the last century's first decade.  "Nineteen-one" does not produce any ambiguity, although I'm not certain whether the convention during that decade was to say "nineteen one" or "nineteen-oh-one." 

In any event, I vote for "twenty-ten" as the name of the New Year.... and a Happy New Year to all readers of this blog.

Comments

[Steve]

I agree