BoyWiki:Agora/7 June 2013

BC or BCE?

After I created 3 links from English century pages to the German and French ones, I had a look to the {{Centurybox}} template to see how to manage for centuries before year 1. I saw that the standard name by now is "1st century BC", etc.

In the French version, we didn't choose Ier siècle av. J.-C. as you can often read in French texts, but Ier siècle AEC, which can be read "Premier siècle avant l'ère commune" (First century before Common Era) or "Premier siècle avant l'ère chrétienne" (First century before Christian Era). The English equivalent is 1st century BCE.

About the English "BCE": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era
About the French "AEC": http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ère_commune
About the German equivalent "V. u. Z.": http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._u._Z.

As the basic meaning of "BCE" is "before Common Era" ("before Christian Era" being just an alternative reading), it is much more neutral. Non-religious and non-Christian people (and there are quite a lot of them!) can be shocked if all dates overtly refer to Christianity. And even Christian boy-lovers often refuse such religious reference, because they are aware of the historical role of Churches in the repression of boy-love.

For all these reasons, I propose to change "BC" into "BCE" for dates before year 1.

(You can have a look at the French BoyWiki, where all century pages have been created from VIIe siècle AEC to XXIe siècle—all of them with links to the future English and German pages.)

Caprineus 22:23, 7 June 2013 (GMT)