CE and BCE sure didn't catch on.
What the heck is wrong with B.C. and A.D. anyway? Political correctness run amok? Religious bias?
Who knows. Who cares.
The PC hall monitors wanted to erase the religious connotation of BC and AD, and replace it with something neutral. Funny thing is, the start of their “Common Era” is what?
Try as they might, they failed.
Nada. I have a history professor now who said something like, "we got away from B.C. because it's based on the birth of Christ, to B.C.E. Which is based on the birth of Christ."
I do have some fun with a little pedantry, though. "Dude, it's '200 BC', but it's NEVER '200 AD'. It's 'AD 200.'"
I don't have many friends...
"CE" (Common Era) and "BCE" (Before the Common Era) were abbreviations that began with British Jews in the early 19th Century, and spread to American Jews shortly thereafter. Jews in England and America were participating in public life with their Christian fellow-citizens (unlike in most of Europe, where Jews were often isolated in ghettos), so they needed to use the same dates as everyone else, but they could not in good conscience acknowledge a "Lord" they didn't believe in. Hence "Common Era."
The usage later spread to historians and archaeologists, especially those working in the Middle East, where they didn't want to offend Jews or Moslems.