Are roman numbers still relevant in your country?

19 comments

1. I don’t see it on things very often but we had to learn them in primary school and high school as part of our SATS and GCSE’s. I feel like most people will know the simple ones like I, V, X but the others, people would start to struggle imo.

2. There are used on clocks, in numbering book chapters, articles in the code of law, districts of a city and so on.

3. They are also used for regnal numbers (Joan II), Papal regnal numbers (Benet XVI) and for volumes (Història de l’evolució humana, Volum III), among other things (like being on clocks/watches).

   Also obviously as relevant as in OP’s country since we happen to share it.

4. I don’t know if it has changed but I was also taught that we should write the centuries in roman numerals, XXI instead of 21st Century and when talking about Monarchs and the likes so King Felipe VI instead of Felipe 6.

5. I’m fairly certain everyone still hears about it in school, how extensively depends on the school tier though, but new things are rarely numbered with Roman numerals so the average adult will have relatively little use for it and probably unlearn it eventually.

6. Not really, I do remember getting taught roman numerals in school. Just as a little fun side thing during history class I think.

   There’s stil a lot of buildings here that have roman numerals here tho. Page numbering of prefaces and introductions of books, and sometimes of appendices and annexes, are sometimes done in roman numerals as well.

   Idk if the average 16 year old right now can read full on numbers in roman, but they certainly know I, II, III, IV, and V.

7. We learn them in school and sometimes the classes are numbered with them: “clasa a XI-a” for “grade 11” as an example

8. Yes but they’re used for very specific things, like footnotes or section numberings in a written text, on coinage or certain memorials.

9. They are taught in primary school. The only use case where you sometimes see them are clocks, but I mean it’s almost irrelevant what symbols are on a clock since you can read of the time by position of the hards alone. Very occasionally you might see roman numerals used in other circumstances (chapter numbering in a book, or something like that), but that’s extremely rare.

   I do however think it’s quite valuable to teach them to kids, just for the sake of them seeing a different number system, so tty know our positional system isn’t the only possible way of writing numbers – but maybe that’s just the maths nred in me.

10. You can see them, but they are not common. It is basically restricted to numbering of kings/popes and clock faces, maybe book volumes, that kind of things.

    That being said, most university students are familliar with numerals 1-21 (I-XXI) 🙂

11. No and they are not taught here. The only reason I know them to about 7 or 8 is that Saw movies were numbered with them. Last time I saw one was when I watched super bowl. They have a monstrous roman number on the logo. I’d say close to 99,9% of the population wouldn’t know what number XIV or something similar is.

12. They are surprisingly more common here in Turkey than some of the major European countries. We learn them in primary school and repeat them every grade until the end of high school. It is a must to use them while writing regnal numbers and centuries

13. Vaguely.

    You see them in abbreviations (i.e. IIe Guerre Mondiale/WOII), sometimes building cornerstones (MDCCCXXXI), royalty (Leopold III, Albert II), and sometimes on prom posters (LIVe Bal de Promotion) or on grandfather clocks or fancy watches.

14. Needless to say, given how pervasive they are and the fact it’s sorta “our thing”, yes, we are taught them in Elementary School. Some High Schools go the extra lenght in having four-five hours of Maths classes in Roman numerals, just to teach why Arabic (well, Indian) numerals ultimately won out.

15. I have rarely seen it being used except for the monarchy, where our current monarch is Harald V. And it’s often used to number government coalitions. For example Stoltenberg II, since it was the second time Jens Stoltenberg formed a new coalition.

16. Yes, they are taught and they are used in some cases like:

    * you go to VI grade ([pic](https://www.kundakool.ee/images/2020/spordipaeev.jpg), it is more and more common to use “grade 6”, but it’s a new thing)
    * sports events: usually your medal / diploma has II on it, not “2nd” ([pic](https://21k-wp.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/21k.ee/2021/12/Padel-hobemagi-2021-scaled.jpg))
    * parts of something are usually labelled as “part I” and “part II” etc ([pic](https://osta.img-bcg.eu/item/13/3267/62933267.jpg))
    * watches/clocks might use them ([pic](https://kellakaubamaja.ee/pub/media/catalog/product/cache/b713c7224a8540ad147b424c5883ca46/m/e/media-catalog-product-t-1-t122.423.11.033.00.jpg))
    * some big building complexes might have buildings/wings numbered as I II III ([pic](https://www.sildid-kleepsud.ee/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Majajuht-6-772×1030.jpg)), same goes for floors ([pic](https://esitlustarvikud.com/cache/db2/public/g5_img/_910x1000x0xCL488/12413_Pohja-Tallinna_Jalgpallikubi_majajuhid.jpg), but it would not be unusual at all to see arabic numbers for floors)
    * all the foreign kings and the like are written in roman numerals in Estonian, too

    We have a grammar rule in Estonian, that if you use the numerals for counting (first, second), you write the number either as “1.” or as “I”. I kinda think this is also a common system elsewhere?

17. I feel like they are commonly on clocks, but now I think about it I wonder if that’s an incredibly 90s thing. That’s how I learned them though.

    Also the BBC puts the year of first broadcast at the end of the programme credits, which was kind of like a cool challenge in the 90s but after the millennium got really easy, unless it was a repeat.

18. Yes, they are present in primary school maths textbooks (although I’m not sure we’re tested on that). We use them for writing centuries, regnal numbers and other important names.

    Examples:
    – I połowa XIX wieku (first half of the 19th century)
    – Jan III Sobieski (monarch, 1674-1696)
    – III Rzeczpospolita (3rd Republic)
    – II Wojna Światowa (2nd World War)

19. Widely used for ordinal numbers (“XVII international congress of catcalling” and such). Also street names with dates in them, like “via XX settembre” (*20th of September street*) not to confuse them with street numbers.