As the title suggests, I am looking into the historical precedent of cultures and civilizations using letters or symbols to track what they thought of as historical periods. I began to be interested in the question as I learned that "B.C" once meant "Before Christ", but we now refer to it as "B.C.E.", meaning "Before Common Era". I have read a lot of fantasy and historical fiction books, and many in the fantasy genre just have the people invent their own "B.C.E /A.C.E", but I am skeptical of this being a historical commonality. I realize this may seem like a simple question, but as someone not well versed in this subject yet, I seem to have inadequate knowledge to ask google the right question, as it normally just pulls up videos referring to what other cultures thought of each other, which is not really what I'm looking for.

For example, if you went back in time during the the Ming Dynasty of china AD 1368 – 1644, and asked what year it was, how would someone explain the current year, and how it is connected to other periods of time.

Thank you very much for your time