# Calendars in Your World



## TrustMeImRudy (Oct 28, 2013)

So for the most part I don't deal with Calendars and solar, lunar years, etc, I just use our Gregorian one and maybe change the names or just don't reference it at all. But with my WIP I wanted to try a different calendar without really changing too much since my limited knowledge would result in something broken Im sure. So I'd love to hear the calendar's you all use, as well as advice on which I should use that approximates our real calendars, since in my WIP it is possibly the same planet earth in a forgotten age.

For my own, I'm considering the World Calendar, making Worldsday and Leapyearday into actual religious holidays, kind of how the Ancient Egyptians viewed five days of each year to be outside of time. What about you all? Wanna give us some examples?


----------



## ThinkerX (Oct 28, 2013)

I decided to keep things simple on my world:

12 months of 28 days each (four weeks of seven days), plus four extra days, NOT part of any month or week, corresponding to the equinoxes and solistices...which are major secular and religious holidays.  Seventh day of the week (equivilent of Sunday) is a day of rest and 'church day type deal.  

As to the names of the months, well the dominant culture is descended from displaced romans, and the the names of the roman calender months are often very close to what we use now.


----------



## Asura Levi (Oct 28, 2013)

I would say go simple, building a calendar is headache unless you really love math (I like math and got some headache), specially if you leave the 'standard' one moon and one sun.

If you want to try different things, I would suggest you to take a pick in what wikipedia has to say about it, that had being plenty of different calendars used all around the ages so far.


----------



## TrustMeImRudy (Oct 28, 2013)

Thinker, thats what I was thinking of originally, very similar to the Egyptian one, but if it has the same orbit as Earth there is a lot of drift per year, so the holidays are all on different dates each year, like ours going along like 'the first monday of november' or so and so,do you just not worry about it?

Asura yeah, I think I will just use the World calendar that is very simple, I actually just chose it from Wikipedia.
But I'm genuinely curious what other people who understand the lunar, solar, lunisolar deal and care to figure it out are doing in their worlds.


----------



## Svrtnsse (Oct 28, 2013)

For the planetary(?) calendar I just copied it straight from the real world: 365 days, to a year etc. I haven't had reason to name the months ye, but I'll probably go with the same as in the real world. It's what I did with the weekdays when they needed mentioning at some point.
There's an exception though (of course). The Anfylk race are using an 8 day week instead of a 7 day week. I also made up different names for the days of the anfylk week and tried to come up with different reasons for the names.
The 8th day is Choresday which is between the working day and the weekend and which is dedicated to doing chores around the home, so that the weekend can be spent actually resting (resting is an important part of anfylk religion).

Full article: The Anfylk Week - Odd Lands Wiki


----------



## TrustMeImRudy (Oct 28, 2013)

The thing for me is that using the same names is a bit jarring. You have no real world locales or people in my story, and they have different gods so why would they use the same month names that are based on roman gods? Or week days that are based on norse gods?


----------



## Svrtnsse (Oct 28, 2013)

TrustMeImRudy said:


> The thing for me is that using the same names is a bit jarring. You have no real world locales or people in my story, and they have different gods so why would they use the same month names that are based on roman gods? Or week days that are based on norse gods?



I'm doing it out of convenience (laziness is part of it, but it's not the only part).

If I write "It's Monday morning and Enar is hurrying to the office." that puts a certain image in your head.
If I write "It's Truthsday morning and Enar is hurrying to the office." that still puts an image in your head, but it's lacking that feeling of the first morning after the weekend.

That said, I do see where you're coming from. Im working with a contemporary setting where people hurrying to the office are likely clutching umbrellas and portfolios, cramming into subways and spilling cheap coffee out of paper cups. As a world-builder I know where the names originally come from and I haven't bothered making up corresponding gods or any other reason for the names. I haven't felt the need.
This is my setting though and the closeness to the real world isn't necessarily a bad thing here. At least not to my current thinking. I may very well change my mind about it later.


----------



## Asterisk (Oct 28, 2013)

The calendar of my world is similar to ThinkerX's. There are two seasons, each with warming periods and cooling periods-- The Cold Season and the Season of the Sun. Each month is made of twenty-eight days, but there are thirteen months, the thirteenth with an extra day used to celebrate the new year. This way it adds up to 365 days and (sort of) makes sense. Math, in my opinion, is Mental Abuse To Humans, so I try to stay away from that when writing.


----------



## johnsonjoshuak (Oct 28, 2013)

Something to keep in mind is that your world won't necessarily have a single calendar to cover everyone. I just wrote a blog post about this a couple weeks ago (here). 

Different calendars might be confusing to keep track of, but they'll add flavor to your world and as long as you track them properly can be cool.


----------



## TrustMeImRudy (Oct 28, 2013)

My world's main continent has seven cultures, and yeah technically each has its own calendar, but the largest launched an invasion a few centuries back that nearly conquered it all. In their time ruling over most of the continent they instated a common tongue and common calendar for eases sake. Its the one I use in the setting, although the individual cultures retain their own languages outside of commerce and government, but the calendar thing is pretty much set.


----------



## ThinkerX (Oct 28, 2013)

> Thinker, thats what I was thinking of originally, very similar to the Egyptian one, but if it has the same orbit as Earth there is a lot of drift per year, so the holidays are all on different dates each year, like ours going along like 'the first monday of november' or so and so,do you just not worry about it?



Nope.  Shorter year. 12 * 28 + 4 = 340 days per year.  Also 340 day orbit.  I've thought about making the days an hour longer or something than ours, but that might be going a bit far.

Way, way back in my initial notes, I went into a bit of detail on the other planets in the solar system, which are important for mythological/astrological reasons.

One moon, good sized but not as large as earths.  

A scorched inner planet, large enough to be seen as an actual disk rather than a point of light (if you've got keen eyes), commonly thought of as a shield or guardian of the sun (and often named after a warrior god) ;

a smaller outer planet (named 'Bel'), sort of subhabitable (with a mixed mythological reputation) ;

a gas giant past that with a magnificent set of rings, again just barely visible to those with good vision (and commonly called  
'Gods Eye') ; 

and another smaller gas giant past it, on the faint side, associated with secrets and mysteries.  

The main celestial object the people of my world are concerned with past the sun and moon, though, is the 'demon star', an ...object... on a sort of erratic cometary orbit (normally appears once every two or three generations), bringing magic and chaos with it.  At the time most of my tales are set, its not been seen for close to 200 years, and its malign influlence is assumed to be banished.

One tale I've been contemplating for a long time now is a sort of ripoff of Dante's 'Paradise', using the aspects of these worlds in a sort of vision quest: the MC would visit a 'realm' corresponding to the traits assigned each planet.  I've actually considered a story or three set on Bel, as well, seeing as part of it is habitable, if just barely so.

I went into similiar detail with the solar system of my other main world, for similiar reasons.


----------



## skip.knox (Oct 28, 2013)

Is a calendar actually necessary in your narrative? What's wrong with "two days later" and the like. 

If you want more specificity, most people in medieval Europe didn't reckon by the calendar much anyway (except for the clergy). Instead, they had feast days. A date was five days before Michaelmas, or ten days past Midsummer, though in truth it was mostly yesterday, tomorrow, or N number of days away from today. 

For more abstract counting, they reckoned by the year of their ruler. In the twelfth year of the reign of King Otto, or the like. There wasn't even general agreement on when a new year started!

We moderns are accustomed to dates ... we're enamored of numbers. But that's not how pre-moderns thought, for the most part. You can introduce a certain exotic element simply by *not* assigning dates. Names of days and months are more difficult, but some mileage can be got out of taking names from another language and jiggering the spellling.

I would leave making your calendar astronomically correct as an exercise for your graduate students.


----------



## TrustMeImRudy (Oct 28, 2013)

Im not a teacher, I have no students! D:
But anyways, you're thinking European. But the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Mayans, and many more all had very accurate calendar systems, often with 365 days similar to our own. Keeping time was very important...astronomically so. And none of my cultures have a primarily European influence, except maybe the forest elves, but that's more of the Irish Celtic, and they are actually the ones who are the least concerned with calendars, instead counting the rings in their associated tree [planted at birth] in their family grove to determine their age, and idk how they keep time on other stuff yet.

Thinker, I like the level of all that. I'm not sure how i will handle planetary systems yet, but they always have mythologically influence so they are important.


----------



## Lunaairis (Oct 29, 2013)

The calender of my world has 5 seasons. beginning(2 month), Birth(3 months), burning(1 month. Is the hottest season of the year.), rebirth(2 months), Ending (coldest season of the year. 2 months) Each month is divided into 35 days each day taking almost 32 hours to complete. 

every 8 years a week of 8 days is added to the calendar and is considered the week of creation. Each day devoted to one of the prime gods/goddess.


----------



## ThinkerX (Oct 29, 2013)

> Is a calendar actually necessary in your narrative? What's wrong with "two days later" and the like.
> 
> If you want more specificity, most people in medieval Europe didn't reckon by the calendar much anyway (except for the clergy). Instead, they had feast days. A date was five days before Michaelmas, or ten days past Midsummer, though in truth it was mostly yesterday, tomorrow, or N number of days away from today.
> 
> ...



My main nation isn't a typical medivial one.  

Solaria is a highly organized nation...something like the old line Roman Empire having a head on collision with the Enlightenment.  They have telescopes, complex clockworks, and bicycles, among many other tech toys.  Messages are sent across a distance of thousands of miles in mere days using a network of semaphore towers.  Not just talking imperial edicts, either, but mercentile messages and even personal notes between commoners.  Dates and timekeeping are essential to keeping the wheels of empire turning.  I'm contemplating having a saintly order dedicated to calender/timekeeping duties.

That said, precise timekeeping is only of occasional importance in the stories:  'if X happens in the eastern empire, then person Y in the western empire will know of it in a couple days, tops'.  But, as the author, I need to know this stuff, for internal consistency.


----------



## WooHooMan (Oct 29, 2013)

It's weird.  I've made-up religions, philosophies, political ideologies, languages, fashions, animals and literary genres but it didn't even cross my mind to create a new calendar.  I guess I just use the standard 365 days in 12 months.  I don't really see a point in making a new calendar.  It seems like it'll make the story more confusing.


----------



## Queshire (Oct 29, 2013)

Hmmmm..... I was just considering this for my latest WIP. I doubt it'll come up a lot in it, but having a different calender system could help reinforce that it's not regular earth. Hm, though I don't think I'll need too much help with that.

I think I'll go with naming the days of the week after numbers. Monday would be Firstday, Tuesday would be Twosday (bum bum tish) Threesday, Foursday, Fivedays, with the weekend being Sixday and Sevenday.

For the months I'm going with twelve months named after different elements most likely. The months would be 30 days  each with a five day long celebratory period not part of any month which serves as a Christmas equivalent, and a leap day type thing every four years on the opposite side of the year as the celebratory period. I figure the leap day type thing would coincide with some event. Maybe a one day long demonic invasion?


----------



## topazfire (Oct 29, 2013)

For my WIP I created a calendar that is very much based on a compass. The compass directions are culturally and religiously significant. So as you may have guessed: there are 360 days, divided into 4 Seasons (instead of months) and each Season (which is treated like a month) is 10 weeks of 9 days each. (So the math works out pretty easy...) 

The first day of each Season (or the eve of the next Season) have significance throughout the year, so they are named and celebrated in various ways throughout the realm, and are often the point where major plot events happen. 

I hadn't actually thought of naming the days of the week, since it hasn't come up at all in the actual writing. I find that I've been sticking with "a few weeks away" "a week to get there" "in a couple of days" etc. 

Like others have said, calendars are more or less important to different groups. People in rural regions are only really concerned with the 4 major holidays, since they mark the changing of the Season. People in the larger cities and the clergy would have more use for weekly or daily record keeping.


----------



## Ireth (Oct 29, 2013)

One of the fun things about writing a) stories set in the real world and/or b) writing stories about the Fae is that in the case of a, I can just use the real calendar; and in the case of b, the Fae are so ancient they don't even count years. Their most important way of measuring time is by seasons, winter vs. summer (each lasting six months, corresponding to the Celtic calendar). Winter runs from Nov. 1 to April 30; summer runs from May 1 to Oct. 31.

My only story set in a truly alien world is the one about sapient wolves, and that one is a tricky one. For one thing, the world has no moon, so a lunar calendar is impossible; for another, what need does a wolf have for a calendar? Sapient or not, I would think they'd operate mainly on instinct and the natural rhythms of the body (mating seasons, etc.)


----------



## skip.knox (Oct 30, 2013)

@Ireth: wrt wolves: probably also seasons of the year, which would tend to regulate hunting. You could have a Starving Time, and even rituals to go with that (maybe some contesting for dominance, to lead the pack into winter). Depending on what they hunt, there would be the time when the prey goes away and a time when it reappears. But not much beyond that, for sure.


----------



## wordwalker (Oct 31, 2013)

Sounds like there are two things to watch about calendars:

One, they can give a feeling for your own world. If you have a list of heroes, elemental forces, poetic images, or whatever else you want to say your world would pick for this, there's some value in using it rather than just "they never say Monday."

The other is, some days and months are worth presenting along with an implication. You can't say "Gluurgsday" with the same effect as showing someone stumble into the shop from a long weekend and say "I hate Gluurgsdays." (Assuming they have weekends. Most Earth cultures seem to have developed at least a one-holy-day-a-week-off system, although in Asia it's more likely to be a lot of events over the yearly calendar.)


----------



## Trick (Nov 1, 2013)

My calendar is base thirteen. There are Thirteen totems for which the days, months and 'fortnights' are named. Fortnights are thirteen days with the 7th, 13th and 14th days off (Imagine a long week with both a weekend and a middle day off). Two fortnights is one month = 26 days. I have actually planned it down to the second. There are 52 seconds in an minute, 52 minutes in an hour and 26 hours in a day. Having done the math I found that people living by my created schedule would actually be slightly younger at a given age than they are in the Gregorian calendar but it's minimal enough to matter very little.

There are four seasons of three months each and a separate month between Haerfast (Fall) and Haeberna (Winter) called Haerftide when farmers take a month long break before harvest. All of this plays into the central theme of the book but I will not be describing it all in detail because... well... I want people to read it.  

I even created a circular calendar that serves as a year long clock, showing the Season, Month, Day, Hour and Second at once. The use of this device by characters will be the closest I come to describing the calendar. I'd rather just make it clear that everything is based on the thirteen totems and then move on. Creating it has helped me in outlining though.


----------



## Ireth (Nov 1, 2013)

@Trick - not to sound nitpicky, but the word "fortnight" literally means "fourteen nights". If you take one off, that makes it a bit of a misnomer. ^^;


----------



## Trick (Nov 2, 2013)

That's the reason I referred to them as 'fortnights.' I'm not sure what I'll call them. Since it hasn't been much of an issue on the writing side I'm okay with the delay. I've been playing with variations of nomenclature involving thirteen but haven't found something that fits as of yet. I could call them Thirtnights but that sounds more like a condition than a length of time


----------



## Malik (Nov 3, 2013)

In medieval stasis tropes, the people will have absolutely no idea how their world works. Celestial mechanics are so complicated -- and, we're finding as we discover more systems beyond our own, so varied -- that you can do just about anything as long as it's consistent. The people won't know what's driving the world around them. They'll just map it out and call it normal. Then you can hope to sell enough books that some nerd someplace will do the math for you and map it out for everyone else on a forum. 

The calendar is important because it drives the society, and if you're doing heroic / epic fantasy -- or any kind of fantasy that includes social commentary, whether it's implied through something as subtle as Aristotelian syllogism or whether it's outright proselytized by the MC in direct quotes -- then the society is a character of its own and you have to know its motivations.


----------



## ThinkerX (Nov 3, 2013)

> In medieval stasis tropes, the people will have absolutely no idea how their world works. Celestial mechanics are so complicated -- and, we're finding as we discover more systems beyond our own, so varied -- that you can do just about anything as long as it's consistent. The people won't know what's driving the world around them. They'll just map it out and call it normal. Then you can hope to sell enough books that some nerd someplace will do the math for you and map it out for everyone else on a forum.



Again, not all of us are using generic unmodified 'medieval stasis tropes'.  Some folks here are scribing tales in steam punk worlds, where a crude form of space travel might actually be possible, and others are writing tales in post apocalyptic settings that only superficially appear medieval.  In these cases, a sophisticated calendar and a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy is understandable. 

The main nation of my main world is just starting to embark on an industrial and scientific revolution.  They are highly organized, with cities topping the half million range, have telescopes, microscopes, hot air ballons, bicycles, and complex clockwork type mechanisms.  More, the ancestors of the humans on this world, along with other races, were brought here many millenia ago by the now mostly departed 'Old Ones', or 'aliens', who also taught their favored subjects among these peoples quite a bit of esoteric knowledge, some of which persists.  Plus, Lovecraftian monstrosities of various sorts have a presence on this world, and they sometimes divulge advanced lore to their servants.

Yes, there are still armored knights and the rest.  But that is changing.


----------



## TrustMeImRudy (Nov 4, 2013)

And there are some who are using ancient times tropes but not the European medieval stasis. Ancient Mayans and Chinese and Indians all had very complex forms of astronomy and exceptional calendar systems. Egyptians too, and that is reeeeeeally ancient.


----------



## Malik (Nov 5, 2013)

I'm not saying fantasy has to use the stale Planet England trope. I'd prefer that it doesn't, personally. And good on you for doing something new. 

My point was, you don't have to explain it any further than your characters understand it, and we're now finding that there are enough variables to celestial mechanics that you can get away with almost anything. Which is pretty awesome when you think about it.


----------



## SensibleRin (Nov 16, 2013)

I complicate everything!  In my world, Vanity, its all different.
The day is longer, the week is shorter, the months are shorter but in greater number, and the year has more days in it.
The hour, minute and second are really only the same.  The day is 32 hours long.
The week is five days long: moonsday, sunsday, starday, earthday, and godsday.  moonday is called such because it is always a new or full moon on that day.
The month is twenty days long and four weeks long.  Each month contains a full moon cycle, thus beginning and ending at new moon.  There are twenty months in a year.
The year is four hundred days long, or eighty weeks long.  A Vanitian year is 1.46 earth years.  The year begins at winter solstice, so the month names proceed like this: 1. Newest Moon, 2. Ice Moon, 3. Thaw Moon, 4. Stone Moon, 5. Seed Moon, 6. Skyling Moon, 7. Thorn Moon, 8. Lamb Moon, 9. Rose Moon, 10. Dream Moon, 11. Oath Moon, 12. Smoke Moon, 13. Corn Moon, 14. Wheat Moon, 15. Harvest Moon, 16. Fire Moon, 17. Fading Moon, 18. Frost Moon, 19. Snow Moon, and 20. Oldest Moon.
Thus Winter is months 19-2, Spring is months 4-7, Summer is months 9-12, and Autumn 14-17.  The people of Vanity have four interseasons called Transin, where the seasons transition from one to another, thus months 3, 8, 13, and 18 are Transin months.
As for holidays, there are various seasonal feasts and celebrations of heroes or a country's founding, or great battles.  But the most important holiday is Midwinter, the three days before the end of the year, and the three first new days.  Each day is celebrated in its own way, and there is an all night vigil on the last day of the year into the new.


----------



## Edankyn (Nov 16, 2013)

In my book all of the mathematics are based off of a base 6 system instead of a base 10 system. This also relates to the time/calendar/seasons/etc. I have six seasons instead of 4. Each of these seasons last six cycles (weeks) of six (days). In the end this brings the year on my planet to a total of 216 days. I based my seasons loosely around the southeast Asian seasons which includes the traditional seasons plus monsoon and pre-vernal.


----------



## TrustMeImRudy (Nov 18, 2013)

Damn lol you guys took that beyond my ability to properly comprehend.  So how do you work those into your stories or is it just for your own reference? Mine is mostly the latter.


----------



## ThinkerX (Nov 18, 2013)

> Damn lol you guys took that beyond my ability to properly comprehend. So how do you work those into your stories or is it just for your own reference? Mine is mostly the latter.



'Labyrinth' is written in journal form, hence dates (and a calendar) are needed.

Certain days (solistices and equinoxes) are of immense importance, and therefor carefully tracked.  

And being a civilized empire, the calendar comes in handy for the bureaucratic characters who go 'well, that won't happen until the fifth of next month, ten days from now' and whatnot. 

Thats Solaria.

Cimmar, a much more primitive realm across the ocean...well, ordinary folk go by the seasons and special days, and only the priests and clerks bother much with actual dates.


----------



## SensibleRin (Nov 18, 2013)

For me having a regular calendar, with holidays and set birthdays and specific dates is incredibly freeing, ironically.  All those little details add incredible verisimilitude to the story.  
For example, as I was plotting out a court intrigue, I looked at my timeline for that month and realized there was a major date conflict.  My MC Kattala's noble employer was about to have a birthday, but her sister was to be married a day before, on the other side of the country.  Suddenly there is a kind of conflict there, and not a world-shaking one.  Does she put her job over her family?
If someone has a birthday a day after a big holy day, everyone might be too tired to celebrate properly.  The Birthday person may even resent having their day overshadowed by that holiday, much as some Christmas babies do.
Admittedly, I am not a huge fan of math.  But I feel having dates that are accurate and realistic add a lot.  
I also wanted to give, with my 32 hour day, 5 day week, 4 week 20 day month, 400 day 20 month 80 week year to be so neat and tidy that my natives would look at Earth's calendar and not know how we get on with our day without undue confusion.  The answer of course is that most of us do require many aids to keep track of things.
In Vanity it is fairly simple to know when things are.


----------



## Xitra_Blud (Nov 18, 2013)

They don't have a sun. They tell time and days apart by the moon.


----------



## NumberFiftyFive (Nov 19, 2013)

Steampunk Fairytales: Calendar and Chronology
On Shaar I dared create an alternate calendar with years nearly twice as long as ours on Earth. It ended up making the characters confusingly aged- For example an 18 year old young woman might introduce herself as 9 years old, making the reader give an interal _What?_ before remembering the calendar system.


----------

