What do the roman numerals mdccccxxiv mean?

Answer 1

The Roman numeral MDCCCCXXIV is 1924 in Hindu-Arabic.

Each letter has a value, such that M is 1000, D is 500, C is 100, L is 50, X is 10, V is 5 and I is 1. Numerals are formed by adding up the values of each letter.

Numerals are normally written in descending order of value, however there are 6 pairs of symbols that are subtractive rather than additive. For instance, IV means one short of five, which is four. Similarly, IX is 9, XL is 40, XC is 90, CD is 400 and CM is 900.

Although DCCCC is perfectly acceptable for the value 900, the accepted convention states that no numeral may repeat more than 3 times in succession (hence the use of subtractives). Thus MDCCCCXXIV is usually written MCMXXIV.

However, the Romans themselves didn't use the subtractive pairs IV or IX very often (although they did use the other four pairs). Thus MCMXXIV would have normally been written as MCMXXIIII by the Romans.