text: what are nicknames for different eras? (ex: age of enlightenment)? this is probably weird, but i'm doing a project on what the medieval era could be called (age of faith, etc) and need some other era's nicknames for the introduction. :] thanks in advance. actually, the medieval era is usually referred to as the dark ages. because of the stranglehold that supersition had on people. anything connecting with science and the arts was considered evil, in fact a person would be killed if he/she defied the held order of the day. when people actually managed to break free of this, was the era that is called the renaissance, which referred to the rebirth of knowledge.