PS: Well, along with what you wrote, BC, you do have to pick your battles sometimes. This IS just a small brick in the wall. You can't fight all the small stuff, but this is one I decided pissed me off enough to keep fighting.

For Mr. Blanc, well, first of all, I really think, just as with the expression "Oriental", it's not actually the folks all over the world who really care or get offended, but the SJW ctrl-left crowd right here. They need to be stopped. I am trying to think of an example or two of terminology with religious roots that we all need to use (aviation uses English and French) for example. The problem is that the West created the bulk of all the science and technology over the last 1/2 millennium, so I really can't.

Americans don't seem to mind using the term Karma, for instance, but it's not a term you have to use, such as BC/AD if you study history. The Chinese may be running things soon, but then we still won't run into any examples either for 2 reasons:

1) They aren't really religious at this point.
2) Their technical writing is not based on older cultures or religion anyway, as (one thing I kind of like about their language) they put common words together to make technical terms - instead of a new Chinese word for artery they say "blood pipes", and "phone" is "electronic talk". Cool!

Thanks for the good comment, both.

PS: A rational conclusion, MBlanc46, and I have accepted the change with much the same opinion. I understand the motivation of those opposing. Many Christians perceive an increasing disparity between attitudes of political, media and corporate interests toward their religion compared with others; namely, other religions are treated with a proper regard for their sensiblities while Christianity is not accorded the same respect. In that context, the AD vs CE style seems like one more brick in the wall. It's seen as a skirmish in a much larger struggle and they are leery of ceding any more ground. Seen from a distance, BCE and CE, seem like such small things, showing a proper deference for other people and so on, but sometimes the line in the sand is drawn in unlikely places. I feel the same way about some things, just not this one.

PS I’m going to weigh in on the side of the “correct” view here, although I’m pretty much a reactionary. The West has been so successful in exporting modernity that everyone in the world—the Shintoist Japanese, the Taoist and Confucian Chinese, the Hindu Indians, the Muslims in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, the animist Africans—has adopted our system of dating. But they have not all adopted our religion. It’s a small point, but it doesn’t seem too much to ask that they not have to reference our religion when writing dates.