A common year is a calendar year with 365 days, as distinguished from a leap year, which has 366 days. More generally, a common year is one without intercalation. The Gregorian calendar (like the earlier Julian calendar) employs both common years and leap years to keep the calendar aligned with the tropical year, which does not contain an exact number of days.
The common year of 365 days has 52 weeks and one day, hence a common year always begins and ends on the same day of the week (for example, January 1 and December 31 will fall on a Wednesday in 2025) and the year following a common year will start on the subsequent day of the week. In common years, February has exactly four weeks, so March begins on the same day of the week. November also begins on this day. For example, February 2025 begins on a Saturday, so March will begin on a Saturday as well. November will follow the same characteristic.
Each common year has 179 even-numbered days and 186 odd-numbered days.
In the Gregorian calendar, 303 out of every 400 years are common years. By comparison, in the Julian calendar, 300 out of every 400 years are common years, and in the Revised Julian calendar (used by Greece) 682 out of every 900 years are common years.
Generally speaking, a calendar year begins on the New Year's Day of the given calendar system and ends on the day before the following New Year's Day, and thus consists of a whole number of days. A year can also be measured by starting on any other named day of the calendar, and ending on the day before this named day in the following year. This may be termed a "year's time", but not a "calendar year". To reconcile the calendar year with the astronomical cycle certain years contain extra days. The Gregorian year, which is in use in most of the world, begins on January 1 and ends on December 31. It has a length of 365 days in an ordinary year, with 8760 hours, 525,600 minutes, or 31,536,000 seconds; but 366 days in a leap year, with 8784 hours, 527,040 minutes, or 31,622,400 seconds. With 97 leap years every 400 years, the year has an average length of 365.2425 days. Other formula-based calendars can have lengths which are further out of step with the solar cycle: for example, the Julian calendar has an average length of 365.25 days, and the Hebrew calendar has an average length of 365.2468 days. The Lunar Hijri calendar is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 months in a year of 354 or 355 days. The astronomer's mean tropical year, which is averaged over equinoxes and solstices, is currently 365.24219 days, slightly shorter than the average length of the year in most calendars.
A leap year is a calendar year that contains an additional day compared to a common year. The 366th day is added to keep the calendar year synchronised with the astronomical year or seasonal year. Since astronomical events and seasons do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars having a constant number of days each year will unavoidably drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track, such as seasons. By inserting ("intercalating") an additional day—a leap day—or month—a leap month—into some years, the drift between a civilization's dating system and the physical properties of the Solar System can be corrected.
A common year starting on Sunday is any non-leap year that begins on Sunday, 1 January, and ends on Sunday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is A. The most recent year of such kind was 2023 and the next one will be 2034 in the Gregorian calendar, or, likewise, 2018 and 2029 in the obsolete Julian calendar, see below for more.
A common year starting on Friday is any non-leap year that begins on Friday, 1 January, and ends on Friday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is C. The most recent year of such kind was 2021 and the next one will be 2027 in the Gregorian calendar, or, likewise, 2022 and 2033 in the obsolete Julian calendar, see below for more. This common year is one of the three possible common years in which a century year can begin on, and occurs in century years that yield a remainder of 100 when divided by 400. The most recent such year was 1700 and the next one will be 2100.
A common year starting on Monday is any non-leap year that begins on Monday, 1 January, and ends on Monday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is G. The most recent year of such kind was 2018 and the next one will be 2029 in the Gregorian calendar, or likewise, 2019 and 2030 in the Julian calendar, see below for more. This common year is one of the three possible common years in which a century year can begin on and occurs in century years that yield a remainder of 300 when divided by 400. The most recent such year was 1900 and the next one will be 2300.
Dominical letters or Sunday letters are a method used to determine the day of the week for particular dates. When using this method, each year is assigned a letter depending on which day of the week the year starts. The Dominical letter for the current year 2024 is GF.
A common year starting on Tuesday is any non-leap year that begins on Tuesday, 1 January, and ends on Tuesday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is F. The most recent year of such kind was 2019 and the next one will be 2030, or, likewise, 2014 and 2025 in the obsolete Julian calendar, see below for more.
A leap year starting on Monday is any year with 366 days that begins on Monday, 1 January, and ends on Tuesday, 31 December. Its dominical letters hence are GF. The current year, 2024, is a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar. The last such year was 1996 and the next such year will be 2052 in the Gregorian calendar or, likewise, 2008 and 2036 in the obsolete Julian calendar. 29 February falls on Thursday.
A common year starting on Wednesday is any non-leap year that begins on Wednesday, 1 January, and ends on Wednesday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is E. The most recent year of such kind was 2014, and the next one will be 2025 in the Gregorian calendar or, likewise, 2015 and 2026 in the obsolete Julian calendar, see below for more. This common year is one of the three possible common years in which a century year can begin on, and occurs in century years that yield a remainder of 200 when divided by 400. The most recent such year was 1800 and the next one will be 2200.
A common year starting on Saturday is any non-leap year that begins on Saturday, 1 January, and ends on Saturday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is B. The most recent year of such kind was 2022 and the next one will be 2033 in the Gregorian calendar or, likewise, 2023 and 2034 in the obsolete Julian calendar. See below for more.
A common year starting on Thursday is any non-leap year that begins on Thursday, 1 January, and ends on Thursday, 31 December. Its dominical letter hence is D. The most recent year of such kind was 2015 and the next one will be 2026 in the Gregorian calendar or, likewise, 2021 and 2027 in the obsolete Julian calendar, see below for more.
A leap year starting on Saturday is any year with 366 days that begins on Saturday, 1 January, and ends on Sunday, 31 December. Its dominical letters hence are BA. The most recent year of such kind was 2000 and the next one will be 2028 in the Gregorian calendar or, likewise 2012 and 2040 in the obsolescent Julian calendar. In the Gregorian calendar, years divisible by 400 are always leap years starting on Saturday. The most recent such occurrence was 2000 and the next one will be 2400, see below for more.
A leap year starting on Friday is any year with 366 days that begins on Friday 1 January and ends on Saturday 31 December. Its dominical letters hence are CB. The most recent year of such kind was 2016 and the next one will be 2044 in the Gregorian calendar or, likewise, 2000 and 2028 in the obsolete Julian calendar.
A leap year starting on Thursday is any year with 366 days that begins on Thursday 1 January, and ends on Friday 31 December. Its dominical letters hence are DC. The most recent year of such kind was 2004 and the next one will be 2032 in the Gregorian calendar or, likewise, 2016 and 2044 in the obsolete Julian calendar.
A leap year starting on Wednesday is any year with 366 days that begins on Wednesday 1 January and ends on Thursday 31 December. Its dominical letters hence are ED. The most recent year of such kind was 2020 and the next one will be 2048 in the Gregorian calendar, or likewise, 2004 and 2032 in the obsolete Julian calendar, see below for more.
The determination of the day of the week for any date may be performed with a variety of algorithms. In addition, perpetual calendars require no calculation by the user, and are essentially lookup tables. A typical application is to calculate the day of the week on which someone was born or a specific event occurred.
The Doomsday rule, Doomsday algorithm or Doomsday method is an algorithm of determination of the day of the week for a given date. It provides a perpetual calendar because the Gregorian calendar moves in cycles of 400 years. The algorithm for mental calculation was devised by John Conway in 1973, drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll's perpetual calendar algorithm. It takes advantage of each year having a certain day of the week upon which certain easy-to-remember dates, called the doomsdays, fall; for example, the last day of February, 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, and 12/12 all occur on the same day of the week in any year.
The ISO week date system is effectively a leap week calendar system that is part of the ISO 8601 date and time standard issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) since 1988 and, before that, it was defined in ISO (R) 2015 since 1971. It is used (mainly) in government and business for fiscal years, as well as in timekeeping. This was previously known as "Industrial date coding". The system specifies a week year atop the Gregorian calendar by defining a notation for ordinal weeks of the year.
The Gregorian calendar is the calendar used in most parts of the world. It went into effect in October 1582 following the papal bull Inter gravissimas issued by Pope Gregory XIII, which introduced it as a modification of, and replacement for, the Julian calendar. The principal change was to space leap years differently so as to make the average calendar year 365.2425 days long, more closely approximating the 365.2422-day 'tropical' or 'solar' year that is determined by the Earth's revolution around the Sun.
A century common year is a common year in the Gregorian calendar that is divisible by 100 but not by 400. Like all common years, these years do not get an extra day in February, meaning they have 365 days instead of 366. These years are the only common years that are divisible by 4.
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