Over the years, it has been noted that the NFL’s Super Bowl is perhaps the last significant reminder, in the United States, anyway, of the ancient counting system created by the Romans about 2,500 years ago.

Roman numerals under the value of 20 still pop up, here and there, in modern American usage. In books. To define the third or fourth man to hold the same name (Robert Preppy IV). In kings, like Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

But once you get past, oh, XIII, I think the Roman numeral is hanging by a thread. Even with the Super Bowl pitching in every February.

The most complicated Super Bowl number to date is attached to this weekend’s game: XLIX, and not everyone is going along with the NFL’s semi-pretentious naming convention.

The New York Times, a bastion of conservatism on matters literary (if not political), seems to be making no real effort at homogeneous usage, in this Super Bowl. Check this list of stories, and you will see the game often is called just “the Super Bowl”. It also has one at least one headline referring to “Super Bowl 2015”. (It is possible every Super Bowl page is topped by XLIX.)

The Los Angeles Times seems to be sticking with Roman numerals.

The Washington Post seems to use them sometimes, but often just goes with “Super Bowl”.

A google search brings up nfl.com using Super Bowl 49 — in the url, anyway.

In England, the Daily Telegraph, the most successful of the “quality” dailies, is using Super Bowl 2015. Meanwhile, the Guardian, also a successful “quality”, is sticking with XLIX.

At The National, in Abu Dhabi, UAE … we call it the Super Bowl. No numbers at all. For our readers, who come from India, England, Australia … what edition of the game this is (most of them would call it a “match”) is of no real importance.

The main issue here is that Roman numerals get complicated, to the point of looking nonsensical. Up through number 88, It is about shuffling four letters — I, V, X and L — and sometimes repeating them to denote values that “Arabic” numbers would grace with a variety of 10 numerals, needing no more than two of them to denote everything through 88 — LXXXVIII to the Romans.

Keeping track of the Roman conventions is difficult.

The other day, when thinking what “49” looks like in Roman numerals, my first stab at it was IL.

L is 50 and I is one, and when a smaller number appears before a greater number, in Roman numerals, the smaller number is meant to be subtracted from the bigger number. And 50-minus-1 yields 49.

But that is not how the Romans did it. (And here is a conversation on why they did not.)

They approached this by getting the batch of 10s correctly. They wanted us to figure out, first, that the number is in the 40s. Hence the first two letters of this year’s Super Bowl: XL. That is, 50-minus-10 equals 40.

Now, we can go figure out the 9.

The subtraction thing comes into play because the Romans eventually didn’t see the point of repeating a number four times in succession. They would do three, but not four.

Thus, 48 last year was XLVIII, but Roman numbers don’t let you go to XLVIIII — or XXXXVIIII, for that matter.

So, we need 10 (X) minus one (I). With the smaller number first. Thus, 9 is IX.

Put together the two halves, and you have: XLIX.

Ta-dah!

Two more things.

1. To look at Roman numbers is to wonder how they got anything complicated accomplished, using mathematics. How do you multiply Roman numerals? But they were great engineers and builders. Turns out, they used an abacus, or something very close to it.

2. Next year, the NFL officially is going with Arabic numerals, for the first and (they say) the only time. Because Super Bowl L looks too weird. Thus, it will be Super Bowl 50 — before they return a year later to Super Bowl LI.

How many people, during that one-year gap, will remember even less of what they were taught as children about Roman numerals? Maybe millions … and don’t even ask about how the Romans denoted a million.