# Immersion, and the days of the week.



## Svrtnsse (Oct 31, 2017)

Do you know of a fantasy setting where the days of the week have the same names as they do in the real world, and that isn't just a fantasy version of the real world? Did you read a story taking place in that setting, and how did you feel about the names for the days?

My story is taking place in a setting that's in roughly the same time period as the present day real world, but which differs in many other aspects. People have regular five day work weeks and two day weekends. I've referenced the weekend already, but I've so far avoided naming any of the days.
I'm now pondering whether to just copy the names of the days from the real world or whether to come up with my own names. What will it do for the immersion if the characters talk about what they're going to do on Monday as opposed to Gruelsday?


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## Ban (Oct 31, 2017)

Svrtnsse said:


> Do you know of a fantasy setting where the days of the week have the same names as they do in the real world, and that isn't just a fantasy version of the real world? Did you read a story taking place in that setting, and how did you feel about the names for the days?
> 
> My story is taking place in a setting that's in roughly the same time period as the present day real world, but which differs in many other aspects. People have regular five day work weeks and two day weekends. I've referenced the weekend already, but I've so far avoided naming any of the days.
> I'm now pondering whether to just copy the names of the days from the real world or whether to come up with my own names. What will it do for the immersion if the characters talk about what they're going to do on Monday as opposed to Gruelsday?



Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" almost uses our days of the week. Sunday, Moonday, Tiasday, Udunsday, Drorsday, Frayday, Satrinsday. He really only put a cultural twist on the names.


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## TheKillerBs (Oct 31, 2017)

It wouldn’t bother me very much. There might be the passing thought of why they’re using the 7-day week if they don’t have our Judeo-Christian tradition but if you already have that may as well equate their days of the week with their corresponding days in our world.


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## Viorp (Oct 31, 2017)

I think you need a lore-reason for renaming the days.


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## Devor (Oct 31, 2017)

Honestly, I think it's better to skip the names all together and duck the issue.


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## Viorp (Oct 31, 2017)

Devor said:


> Honestly, I think it's better to skip the names all together and duck the issue.


It's not like you can always do that though XD


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## CupofJoe (Oct 31, 2017)

TheKillerBs said:


> It wouldn’t bother me very much. There might be the passing thought of why they’re using the 7-day week if they don’t have our Judeo-Christian tradition but if you already have that may as well equate their days of the week with their corresponding days in our world.


I hadn't thought of the week as a judeo-christian construct. I thought it was more to do with easily dividing the 28 days of the moon's cycle. 
In the past I have spent a long time preparing creating calendars, days of the weeks and months and all that went with them. Now I just use relative dates or made up "holidays". So something might happen in three weeks/twenty days time on the eve of Star-fall night or Saint Glem's day... 
I do wish there was a word in English for "the day after tomorrow" and "the day before yesterday". They would be very useful.


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## TheKillerBs (Oct 31, 2017)

CupofJoe said:


> I hadn't thought of the week as a judeo-christian construct. I thought it was more to do with easily dividing the 28 days of the moon's cycle.



If the moon’s cycle were 28 days and not 29 and a half, that would be true. I suspect the early Near Eastern concept of the week as 7 days does, however, tie into that. It isn’t hard to imagine they didn’t go, “Well, 28 is close enough, let’s go with that.”


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## pmmg (Oct 31, 2017)

I had invented new days of the week in some of my game worlds, and have also done so in my current written world, but they don't actually come up too much. In the WIP, I don't think they have come up at all. I do think it unlikely these things would get the same names as we have here on earth, as we would not share the same organic process that would create such names. So, I favor these for immersion. But, like someone said above, I tend to count days in general terms, and not by names. It took 3 days to get to X, as opposed to the arrived on torsday.


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## Ban (Oct 31, 2017)

CupofJoe said:


> I hadn't thought of the week as a judeo-christian construct. I thought it was more to do with easily dividing the 28 days of the moon's cycle.
> In the past I have spent a long time preparing creating calendars, days of the weeks and months and all that went with them. Now I just use relative dates or made up "holidays". So something might happen in three weeks/twenty days time on the eve of Star-fall night or Saint Glem's day...
> I do wish there was a word in English for "the day after tomorrow" and "the day before yesterday". They would be very useful.



Make those words or revive them. They would be very useful for writers and I at least am willing to start using them in my own stuff. In Dutch we have "eergisteren" for the day before yesterday, maybe work off of that


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## Heliotrope (Oct 31, 2017)

It would bug me. The days of the week each are named for viking gods and goddesses. Sun day and moon day are easy enough to get away with, but  Tyr's day, Woden's day and Thor's day are dead give always. I would do what we did and name your days after ancient gods or beings in your world.


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## CupofJoe (Nov 1, 2017)

Banten said:


> Make those words or revive them. They would be very useful for writers and I at least am willing to start using them in my own stuff. In Dutch we have "eergisteren" for the day before yesterday, maybe work off of that


I think my inspiration and want for the words came from a German speaker I know being surprised that we didn't have the words.
The nearest I've come is "eeryest" and "aftmorrow"for the days before yesterday and the after tomorrow. They will work but aftmorrow sounds a bit too constructed...


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## Chessie2 (Nov 1, 2017)

Well, don't hate me, but in Tamriel I believe it's:


Morndas.
Tirdas.
Middas.
Turdas.
Fredas.
Loredas.
Sundas.
Sounds similar to me and I loved it, actually, because it helped me know what day it was. Not like it mattered much in the grand scheme of things but for immersion it's nice.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 1, 2017)

Like I mentioned above, the regular calendar has the seven day week we have in the real world. However, there's also the anfylk calendar which has an eight day week:


Truthsday (Monday)
Infday (Tuesday)
Annsday (Wednesday)
Pipesday (Thursday)
Ladysday (Friday)
Choresday
Feastday (Saturday)
Restday (Sunday)
They've got five working days and two weekend days, and then one day for doing chores you didn't have time to do while you were working.

Truthsday is for the day on which you hear the truth of what you did over the weekend. 
Annsday is Anna's day where Anna is the goddess who created the anfylk. 
Pipesday is for smoking the pipe which is a form of religious worship.
Ladysday is for when the housewives get the evening off after having stayed home to watch the kids all week.
Feastday and Restday are self explanatory, and I don't remember if Infday is something I just made up or if I meant for Inf to be a reference to Inferior day as it's really just a filler.


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## Chessie2 (Nov 1, 2017)

Honestly, I like Choresday. That'd be my favorite day because please tell me there's beer afterwards!


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 1, 2017)

Chessie2 said:


> Honestly, I like Choresday. That'd be my favorite day because please tell me there's beer afterwards!



Cider more likely, although the Winter Fylk might go for beer.


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## Ban (Nov 1, 2017)

CupofJoe said:


> I think my inspiration and want for the words came from a German speaker I know being surprised that we didn't have the words.
> The nearest I've come is "eeryest" and "aftmorrow"for the days before yesterday and the after tomorrow. They will work but aftmorrow sounds a bit too constructed...



Well if we stick to deriving these words from german/dutch, than maybe Eryest and Namorrow would work. Those sound a little nicer to me.


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## Devor (Nov 1, 2017)

Ginday
Tequiladay
Wineday
Rumsday
Vodkaday
Whiskeyday
Beerday

^ This is the calendar I use.

Not in a story, this is the one on my wall.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 1, 2017)

Banten said:


> Well if we stick to deriving these words from german/dutch, than maybe Eryest and Namorrow would work. Those sound a little nicer to me.



Yeasterday and Overyeastearday?


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## pmmg (Nov 1, 2017)

Devor said:


> Ginday
> Tequiladay
> Wineday
> Rumsday
> ...



Hard to tell when one days stops and the other begins though...


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## Nimue (Nov 1, 2017)

Chessie2 said:


> Well, don't hate me, but in Tamriel I believe it's:
> 
> 
> Morndas.
> ...


Another lesson to be learned: be careful when creating fantasy words, or some immature people (me) will chuckle at “Turd-ass” every time they play Skyrim.

This is something that you can easily skirt around.  Skyrim needs definitive days to mark the passage of time in-game, but if you’re writing in a sufficiently archaic world, you don’t really need to mention the day of the week unless you have a plot that depends on a close schedule, or a regimented setting like a monastery or university.  It’s easy to just refer to “two days ago” or “five days hence” rather than naming the day.  And unless you’ve separately explained the days of the week, “next Odinsday” actually gives the reader less information than “five days hence.”  However...it does give a realistic texture to the world.  Pros and cons.  Personally, I wouldn’t use the English days of the week unless your world has a) Nordic gods and b)  Anglicization.  Same for the names of months, which have their roots in Latin numbers and Roman emperors.  And months are perhaps more necessary for world-building, given that it’s likely you’ll need to refer to broad swathes of time.  Could just get away with talking about the seasons, I suppose.

I have a week from my old project I’m going to try to adapt to the new one, but I’ll have to change some of the word influences.  Super basic, just mapping times of day onto the week:

dawnsday
mornday
nonesday
settday
evenday
nuittday
restday

Pull in references to sennights and fortnights, and you can get any day of the year.  Dawnsday of the first sennight of the Fisherman’s Moon.  Using a strictly lunar calendar has its challenges, though.  There’s an extra month that needs to be thrown in here or there, and I’m still not entirely sure about the weeks shifting.  I’d be fairly superficial, but part of the plot depends on the equinoxes and solstices...


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 1, 2017)

Nimue said:


> [...]Using a strictly lunar calendar has its challenges, though.  There’s an extra month that needs to be thrown in here or there, and I’m still not entirely sure about the weeks shifting.  I’d be fairly superficial, but part of the plot depends on the equinoxes and solstices...



Or you can just say that the lunar cycle is exactly as long as it needs to be for there not to be any drift.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2017)

Nimue said:


> Another lesson to be learned: be careful when creating fantasy words, or some immature people (me) will chuckle at “Turd-ass” every time they play Skyrim.
> 
> ...



Oh thank God I'm not the only one who thought of this. I guess I am just that immature....


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## Chessie2 (Nov 1, 2017)

I've actually never thought about it. Then again I paid more attention to the months than I did the days.


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## Ban (Nov 1, 2017)

I've put hundreds of hours into the elder scrolls games and not at one point did I see Turd-Ass. I feel a bit hollow inside for being able to miss that...


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## Nimue (Nov 1, 2017)

Really...really you should count yourself lucky.  It was a bit of a boot to the immersion every time I saw it (probably not what Svrt was thinking when he titled this thread).


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## skip.knox (Nov 1, 2017)

I do so love the liquor days. That really needs to be extended to include the months--maybe cocktails?

Colleen McCullough used the Roman week in her Masters of Rome books. _Nundinae_. The Romans had a nine-day week. She used it for saying things like an event would happen three weeks from today, or the like. While I appreciated what she was doing, I found it distracting because I was always doing a recalc in my head. Took me away from the story by a step or two. After a while (there's something like seven books in the series), I simply stopped caring and _nundinae_ became "some while after tomorrow" in my head.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2017)

^^^ This is what happens to me too when a writer gets too detailed with the world. I stop really paying attention to it. It has no real meaning to me other than "some time in the future" or "a while ago".  The same goes for when writers get fancy with fantasy names, especially if they have a bunch of apostrophes or hyphens. I just read the first two letters and think "beard guy", "short guy", or "warrior lady" and I don't even attempt to learn the names.


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## pmmg (Nov 1, 2017)

Yeah, I make an effort to pronounce names in my head, but if they prove too difficult, they just become that character who whose name starts with an F, or that one who starts with a C. Which is a shame, I sure the name mattered to someone.


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## Nimue (Nov 1, 2017)

For me personally, detailing a calendar is just for me, the person writing in the world.  I gotta make sure my full moons and solstices line up.  But I’d never write the story so that somebody has to think in terms of that calendar to make sense of what’s going on. It’s texture for the setting, and that’s the amount of emphasis that should be put on it.

There are exceptions, of course...if something is really fantastic and plot important, you want to make the reader think about it.  But for most fantasy stories, it’s just an occasional mention that makes the world feel like real people live there, moving through time and marking the days.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 1, 2017)

Main MC's name is Roy. It's not too complicated is it? /worriedface


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## skip.knox (Nov 1, 2017)

I recommend avoiding Russian novels *heh*

I had a devil of a time with _War and Peace_, _Brothers Karamazov_, etc. I think it's a testament to the strength of the writing that the author kept me around. I even read _War and Peace_ aloud to my wife. It actually helped a bit, especially with dealing with all the variants of a single name (formal, familial, pet name).

Names that don't work linguistically do bother me. But I'm willing to ride with the author on complicated names, especially if it's main characters, because I'm going to encounter those names often enough. I think an author undercuts himself, though, with the lore infodump prologues. Those often contain a blizzard of names. Make them complex, and then don't refer to them again for many chapters, if ever, and they just get dumped on the trash heap of indifferent memory.

Not to thread-jump, but I would take this as a concrete bit of learning by reading. I really have looked at how authors name characters, places, objects, etc., with particular attention at what works and does not work for me. That's how I noticed the above. Of course, this is going to vary by reader, so all I can do as an author is please myself first, then argue with my editor.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2017)

Svrtnsse said:


> Main MC's name is Roy. It's not too complicated is it? /worriedface



lol


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## skip.knox (Nov 1, 2017)

Svrtnsse said:


> Main MC's name is Roy. It's not too complicated is it? /worriedface


Is that Roy or Roi? Are you trying to imply kingship here? Is he sometimes called The Roy (Leroy)? Have you considered switching to Rex?

Oh the depths and layers of Roy...


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## Devor (Nov 1, 2017)

Roy is the same name as the lead in Order of the Stick, I'm going to have a hard time giving your character a unique identity....


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 1, 2017)

skip.knox said:


> Is that Roy or Roi? Are you trying to imply kingship here? Is he sometimes called The Roy (Leroy)? Have you considered switching to Rex?
> 
> Oh the depths and layers of Roy...



That's Roy with a capital R followed by o and then y, both in lower case.

The surname and nickname is where it gets complicated, but they're less relevant to the character. I'll illustrate:


> Raoul’s face brightened up. “Wait, I get it.” He turned to Paivi with a big smile on his face. “This is Roy van Waldenberger isn’t it? He’s really famous.”
> 
> “No…” Toini frowned. That wasn’t his name.
> 
> ...


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## pmmg (Nov 1, 2017)

Roy...eh...hmmmm... I'll work on getting it right. buy it might be less confusing if you did not have a silent 'y' on the end....

I read crime and punishment, and yes, the names take some working through, but I managed it.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 1, 2017)

There was a Scooby Doo Episode once with this guy Rick (but you couldn't pronounce it)... 



 (my kid loves Scooby Doo)


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## Devor (Nov 3, 2017)

My opinion earlier mostly still stands, just avoid the issue. There's too much new-name-overload for a small amount of immersion.

But somebody mentioned the months earlier, and it got me thinking...

Most kingdoms are made up of smaller ones - or at least smaller regions. Like how England is made from the Kingdoms of Wessex and Northumbria and others.  Or how Westeros has the seven kingdoms, which each have their dozen-ish lords.

So what if you dedicated a month to each region?  Like, the Month of Wessex, or Wessember, or some better-worded title.  You could even have a festival that moves to the appropriate region each month, and a king's delegation that focuses on bettering that region. It would serve to celebrate the kingdom while marking the time.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 3, 2017)

That would break immersion for me, if a fantasy character referenced Friday night or something. In my WIP i'm doing my best to avoid it. 

I have a similar problem with saying things like January or 6:00. Who knows if any measure of time would be the same as ours? I don't want to come up with a whole other system to make my readers memorize, so I sidestep it.


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## Vvashjr (Nov 17, 2017)

You guys are giving me a lot of ideas about this, and I didn't think of naming my days. My character's POV typically takes place within an entire day. If I need to make it known that an appointment is set days ahead, I simply put it as simple as "over the new few days" while giving a summary of what has the character been doing(usually something mundane).


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## Vvashjr (Nov 17, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> That would break immersion for me, if a fantasy character referenced Friday night or something. In my WIP i'm doing my best to avoid it.
> 
> I have a similar problem with saying things like January or 6:00. Who knows if any measure of time would be the same as ours? I don't want to come up with a whole other system to make my readers memorize, so I sidestep it.



For timing, for hours I use "bell tones" from a religious place of worship to denote. For minutes, I typically use candlemarks or water level(water clocks). But overall, I try not to be too specific about the actual timing when it comes to minutes, so I usually use "a few moments later"


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## kjbartolotta (Nov 24, 2017)

I would do anything to sidestep an issue like this. IRL days of the week don't sound right to me, and I don't want to learn new ones. The calendar in my setting doesn't really have days or months, rather everything runs on an elaborate cycle based on lunar and sidereal movement, and people measure days by how close they are to important holidays and festivals. There's one at least once a week or something, so it's doable.


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## The_Lone_Paladin (Dec 2, 2018)

CupofJoe said:


> I hadn't thought of the week as a judeo-christian construct. I thought it was more to do with easily dividing the 28 days of the moon's cycle.
> In the past I have spent a long time preparing creating calendars, days of the weeks and months and all that went with them. Now I just use relative dates or made up "holidays". So something might happen in three weeks/twenty days time on the eve of Star-fall night or Saint Glem's day...
> I do wish there was a word in English for "the day after tomorrow" and "the day before yesterday". They would be very useful.


That's what a fortnight is


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## Ireth (Dec 2, 2018)

CupofJoe said:


> I do wish there was a word in English for "the day after tomorrow" and "the day before yesterday". They would be very useful.



There are, tho they're rather archaic now... "Ereyesterday" and "overmorrow".


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## ZLMeinecke (Feb 12, 2019)

My story's calendar is a 13 month system, based on the 13 holy saints. To keep it comparable to the American calendar to help readers, and admittedly myself, each month is 28 days to keep on track with the moon cycle, and one seperate Holy Day to keep it at 365 days. 

Rather than naming the days, it will be more 'On the 12th day of the month of St. Domnhall' instead of "Next Tuesday".


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 13, 2019)

Since this thread popped up again, I figured it's time for an update. I'm now 7 books into the series, and so far I still haven't mentioned any name for any weekday.


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## skip.knox (Feb 13, 2019)

I've read a fair amount of medieval documents, from court records to chronicles to literature to parish registers. One rarely finds a day name (except for Sunday, of course). I've not looked into it, but I'd be willing to bet one shiny dime that we start seeing day names regularly when we start getting factories.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 13, 2019)

skip.knox said:


> I've read a fair amount of medieval documents, from court records to chronicles to literature to parish registers. One rarely finds a day name (except for Sunday, of course). I've not looked into it, but I'd be willing to bet one shiny dime that we start seeing day names regularly when we start getting factories.


I had no idea of this, and it's actually quite cool. 

In Enar's Vacation, the anfylk talk a fair bit about the Restday, but the names of the other ones are barely even mentioned.

Could this be one of those cases where modern writers are overthinking it and are unknowingly applying modern day conventions without there being any "need" for it?


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## skip.knox (Feb 13, 2019)

Medieval chronology is fascinating. It's actually its own sub-discipline. Rarely taught in grad school any more, but was once upon a time. I have the pieces and parts for an article on time in the Middle Ages, but all writing right now is queued up behind getting the wretched novel finished.


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## ZLMeinecke (Feb 13, 2019)

I have a book in my writer's library, I believe the title is something like 'A Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England', and it has a great bit about medieval calendars and timekeeping.


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