This is in response to “The bug has a bug” (Voice, March 14) and Philip Schwimmer’s suggestion that Y2K is a misnomer and that the K should more properly be replaced with an M. He says, ” `K’ (kilo) is 1,000 in measures of weight and distance.” Actually, “kilo-” is simply a prefix derived from the Greek word khilioi (thousand) that represents 1,000 of any unit. Examples are the terms kilometer (distance), kilogram (weight), kiloliter (volume), kilocalorie (energy), kilowatt (power). Along these lines, one might quite reasonably refer to the “year 2000” as 2 kiloyears or, in the abbreviated notation that has become popular, Y2K. Or perhaps 2KY. The use of “kilo-” to indicate thousands of years is perfectly reasonable, even though this isn’t typically done. (We don’t normally refer to 1999 as 1.999 kiloyears.)
Mr. Schwimmer did bring up an interesting point, however, about the use of the letter M. Actually M is simply the Roman numeral for 1,000 and has no fundamental connection to the measurement of time other than its fairly common usage in referring to dates. In fact, while Roman numerals have been replaced by Arabic numerals for the most part in today’s society, the former are still used in reference to World War I and World War II, monarchs that share a name (Louis XIV, Louis XV), and other things that have no direct relation to time. Still one could certainly abbreviate the year 2000 in terms of Roman numerals. The proper abbreviation would be YMM, however, instead of Y2M, as proposed by Mr. Schwimmer.
