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1901 was obviously "nineteen-oh-one" because it was too hard to say "one thousand nine hundred oh one"
But in 2001, we said "two thousand one" because "twenty oh-one" sounded weird and didn't save us any syllables. Plus there was that movie, and it was pronounced "two thousand one" which got us in the habit decades ago. And we've just continued the nomenclature. Once we hit 2010 we should have switched over to "twenty ten" but inertia had set in.
I'm expecting us to switch to "twenty" instead of "two thousand" in 2020 even though there is nothing that makes 2020 special numerically. My son graduates in 2020, and his whole graduating class has been referring to it as "twenty-twenty" since he was a freshman 4 years ago. So I bet we all make the switch then if we haven't already.
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