Welcome to Will Herndon's Roman Numerals Page. I hope that you find this page informative and educational. If you have any questions at all, feel free to E-mail me at Q1Q@aol.com.

Basics

Here is a listing of the basic Roman Numeral characters:
One (1)I
Five (5)V
Ten (10)X
Fifty (50)L
One Hundred (100)C
Five Hundred (500)D
One Thousand (1000)M

When ever there is a smaller value charater before a larger, you have to add.

Example: VI=5+1=6

When there is a smaller value charaters after a larger, you have to subtract.

Example: IM=1000-1=999

Advanced

Any roman numeral can be easily multiplied by 1000 by placing a line above the first characters.

Example:

__

VI VI=6006

Facts and Uses

The longest roman numeral from 1 to 2000 is MDCCCLXXXVIII, which is 1888. This is 13 characters long.

Two common words made from roman numerals is I(1) and MIX(1009).

This year is MCMXCIX (1999)

Many places roman numerals can be found is:

Copyright Dates

Watches and clocks

Pentium 2 processors (Not 3. That is !!!, not III)

Cyrix M2 Chips

Preliminary pages in books

Olympic games

Monarchs

Paragraphs in complex documents

Datelines

World War I and II

Public buildings

Monuments

Tombstones

Latin inscriptions

History

The colosseum made between 70 to 80 AD, known as Flavian Ampitheatre has roman numerals. It seats 55,000 people and has 80 entrances. They are numbered 1-76 and 4 are left unnumbered. The odd thing about this place is they don't use contractions. 4 (IV) looks like IIII. Here is an example:

Another example of this is Church of Sant' Agnese fuori le Mura built in 1606. The inscription read MCCCCCCVI instead of MDCVI.

There are many theories on how Romans choose the numbers. The 1 could stand for a finger. The five for a hand, and the ten for two hands. The latin word for one-hundred is centum (which is the C) and 1000 is mille (the M).

I hope this page was informative. E-mail me if you have questions or comments at Q1Q@aol.com. Thanks.

Copyright MCMXCIX