Dates in Roman numerals are popular for tattoos, wedding signs, jewellery and anniversary gifts. The conversion is simple, but a single wrong letter is hard to undo once it’s engraved or inked.
Choose a date, pick how you want it written, and copy it out.
How to use the Roman Numeral Date Converter#
- Enter the date. Type the day, month and year.
- Choose a format. Pick the separator and the order.
- Copy the result. Use the Copy button to take it with you.
How the date is converted#
The day, month and year are each converted separately. The month is its number, so January is I and December is XII.
The year is the longest part. For 2026, that’s MMXXVI. Dates in the 1900s start with MCM, such as MCMXCIX for 1999.
Choosing a format#
Dots, slashes and dashes all work. Americans usually put the month first and most other countries put the day first, so check the order matches what the people reading it expect. Some people prefer to run it together with no separator, but that can be harder to read, and the format with separators makes it clearer where each part starts.
Before you make it permanent#
For a tattoo or engraving, check the result twice and ask someone else to read it back. Our Roman numeral converter can turn it back into a number as a double-check.
Examples in the three common formats#
Day, month and year are each converted on their own, then joined with a separator. The calculator lets you pick the order and the separator, and here is how the same date looks in different styles.
| Date | Day-month-year | Month-day-year | Year-month-day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 February 2027 | XIV.II.MMXXVII | II.XIV.MMXXVII | MMXXVII.II.XIV |
| 1 October 2026 | I.X.MMXXVI | X.I.MMXXVI | MMXXVI.X.I |
| 1 January 2000 | I.I.MM | I.I.MM | MM.I.I |
The month is written as a number, so February is II and October is X. The year 2027 is MMXXVII, with M for each thousand, X for each ten and V and II for the seven.
Where Roman numeral dates turn up#
Roman numerals mark dates on building cornerstones, memorials, clocks, film copyright lines and tattoos. A film made in 1999 often shows MCMXCIX at the end of the credits. Wedding rings, wall art and jewellery use the wedding date in Roman numerals, with dots or dashes between the parts. Some people write the date as a single run of letters with no separator, which looks clean but is harder to read.
Roman numerals have no zero and no way to write years from 4000 on, so the calculator works up to 3999. For dates in the 21st century this is not a limit.
How the Romans themselves wrote dates#
The Romans did not write dates as three numbers. They counted days backwards from three fixed points in each month: the Kalends on the 1st, the Nones on the 5th or 7th, and the Ides on the 13th or 15th. The Ides of March, 15 March, is the best-known example, since it was the day Julius Caesar was killed in 44 BC. Years were named after the consuls in office, or counted from the founding of the city. The modern habit of writing day, month and year in Roman numerals is a decorative borrowing, not an ancient practice.
Picking a layout for a ring, tattoo or plaque#
The same date can look quite different depending on the separator. Dots give a compact, formal look: XIV.II.MMXXVII. Dashes feel more modern, and a slash looks closer to an ordinary written date. A single run of letters with no separator saves space on a ring, but readers may not know where one part ends and the next begins, since MMXXVII could be read as one number only because we know how Roman numerals work. If the date matters to you, keep the separators.
Think about the order too. Day-month-year is common in Nigeria and most of the world, month-day-year in the United States, and year-month-day in standard international and scientific writing.
Frequently asked questions#
Convert the day, month and year to Roman numerals and join them with a separator.
MMXXVI.
Dots or dashes with the day first are most common, but choose what suits you.
No. The converter works for years 1 to 3999.
Standard Roman numerals stop at 3,999 (MMMCMXCIX), because there is no symbol above M for 1,000. A bar over a numeral, called a vinculum, multiplies it by 1,000, but it is rarely used for dates. The calculator limits the year to 3999, which covers every date in normal use.
No. The Roman system had no symbol for zero, so a date like 10 October 2020 is written X.X.MMXX with no zero anywhere, and a year ending in zero simply leaves out that digit. A few medieval writers used the word nulla to mean none, but it was not part of everyday numerals.