Say “Happy New Year” or “Happy 2000,” but whatever you do Dec. 31,don’t say “Happy Millennium.”

Despite the hype to the contrary, the year 2000 is not, in fact,the start of a new millennium.

“If we say that a millennium has to include a full 1,000 years,and two millennia have to include 2,000 years,” said Assistant Deanfor Student Affairs Pat Dintrone,” then the third millennium can’tstart until 2001, the first year of the third millennium.”

Dintrone gave an analogy of counting on your fingers to understandthis mathematical theory. If you count on your fingers from one to10, then continue counting on someone else’s hands 11 through 20, thesecond person starts at 11.

January 1, 0001 to January 1, 2000, is only 1999 years.

Despite the logical explanation, this concept is less likely to bewidely known than all the hype surrounding the supposed upcomingmillennium. Many commercial retailer advertisements, and newsheadlines include the words “new millennium” in their contents.

KNSD San Diego News Director Jim Sanders said he has received manycalls from viewers who say that saying “the new millennium” isincorrect.

“I have gotten so many calls from retired professors and scholarswho say it’s not really the millennium,” Sanders said. “I just makesure my reporters and anchors say ‘the year 2000’ now.”

Dintrone said the hype about calling it the new millennium isprobably really about the fact that the year will start with 2 now,instead of 1.

“The year 2000 seems like a new beginning,” Dintrone said. “Afterall, there are few people alive who have ever changed even the seconddigit of the year (from the 1800s to the 1900s).”