Endianess of date and address formats in Europe and the US
author: Udzu/reddit, added on: 2026-05-25
Udzu:
Endianness in the context of formats refers to the ordering of information: little-endian means most specific to most general (e.g. day, month, year), big-endian means most general to most specific (e.g. year, month, day) and middle-endian is a fugue-like mix (e.g. month, day, year). American dates are famously middle-endian, due to the way they are pronounced when spoken. As this map show, European addresses are the same.
Visualisation details
- Endianess information obtained from ICU Locales and UPU website.
- Map templates obtained from Wikipedia.
- Visualisation done using Python, Pillow and Pudzu.
Collection: writing - Tags: date-formats, address-formats - Source: reddit.com