There are three aspects of dates to note in historical documents. The first is the counting of the calendar year, the second is the Scots rendering of the date, which is important to learn for reading Scottish documents accurately, and the third is interpreting dates written in Latin.

Calendar years
Although celebrations have long taken place on 1 January, the first official New Year which took place on that date in Scotland was 1 January 1600. Before then, the year officially began on 25 March for example 24 March 1490 was followed by 25 March 1491. The rest of the British Isles did not adopt the New Year change until 1 January 1752, by which time 11 days had to be removed from the calendar in adjustment.

The reason for the adjustment was the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. The former, which is often referred to as Old Style, was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC and the latter, often referred to as New Style, was named after Pope Gregory XIII. In 1582, he reformed the Julian calendar since it did not correspond exactly with the solar year. He corrected the error by cutting 10 days from the calendar and made the last year of every fourth century an additional leap year. Many Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar but it was not accepted by most Protestant states until the eighteenth century.

As a result of these conflicting dates, some correspondents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would write two dates in a letter to acknowledge the use of different calendars in Europe and the difference between the years in Scotland and England for the first three months of each year from 1600-1751.

Further information about calendar years can be found at the following website:

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/quick_reference.htm

Scottish dates
In Scottish handwriting you will find dates represented using the prefix jaj eg jajvC~and fourtie two which is 1542.

The jaj comes about from a misinterpretation of handwriting down through the centuries. Initially the part of the date which is one thousand was represented as i m, where i = 1 and m = 1,000. Because a numeral i on its own was often written as j this became jm. Another convention in some hands was to elongate the last minim on an n or an m. Soon what was jm with an elongated last minim became mistaken for jaj.

This (jaj) is what you should take as meaning one thousand in documents written in this manner during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. By the late 18th century dates were more commonly written in Arabic numerals.

It was common for the word year (often written as yeir) to be repeated so you might have a date written down as In the yeir of our Lord jajviC~ and twentie sevin yeirs which we would understand as 1627 AD.

Latin dates, time and numbers
In some documents dates are written in Latin. For example:

Anno Domini millesimo sescentesimo nonagesimo quarto et die decimo septimo mensis Maii
In the year of [our] Lord one thousand six hundred ninety-four, and on the seventeenth day of the month of May ie 17 May 1674.

The lists below are provided from the FamilySearch.org website.

Cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3)
Cardinal numbers are numbers as you would count them such as one book, four pounds, a hundred yards.

Ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
Ordinal numbers are used where a position has to be given to a number such as in dates the 1st of May or the 26th of December or the first post or ninth volume

Numerals
Money
Measurements

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