Dagmaandjaar

Dagmaandjaar is the term used in Dutch to describe the date notation in which the day, month, and year are written in that order. In this format, the common representation is day-month-year (dag-maand-jaar), with examples such as 25-12-2024. It is widely used in the Netherlands and Flanders in everyday writing, on forms, official documents, and personal correspondence. The day and month are typically two digits, and the year four digits, though variations with slashes or spaces are common.

Historically, dagmaandjaar has been the standard European convention for dates in many contexts, but it is not aligned with the ISO 8601 standard, which prescribes year-month-day in numeric form (YYYY-MM-DD) for unambiguous data exchange. In Dutch contexts, you may also encounter the spelled-out form (25 december 2024) especially in formal prose to avoid numeric ambiguity for mixed audiences.

In practice, the choice of separators and whether to include leading zeros varies by medium. Numeric forms such as 01-01-2020 are common in forms and databases; 1-1-2020 may appear in informal writing but can be confusing in international contexts. When international clarity is required, it is advised to use the ISO form or to spell out the month name. Dagmaandjaar is closely related to other date formats such as dd-mm-yyyy, dd.mm.yyyy, and the international yyyy-mm-dd standard.