Alternative Calendar: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

In [[Speculative Fiction]], it's common to use a different calendar than the real world. This makes it clear to the reader that the story takes place either in another world, or in a version of our world so far in the future that time isn't even counted the same way. This also elegantly sidesteps the problems of [[Exty Years From Now]].

In fantasy, a popular version of this is to measure time in "moons" instead of months. In some cases, the author will actually have twelve different names of the form "______ Moon" to replace the twelve months of the Gregorian calendar. Nonetheless, there are actually somewhat more than twelve lunar months in an Earth year. Real lunisolar calendars solve that problem by adding a leap month to certain years; some purely lunar calendars (like the Islamic one) ignore the solar year altogether and just declare twelve lunar months to be a year.

 

 

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Code Geass]]'' takes place in the year 2017 a.t.b ("Ascension Throne Britannia"), counting from the establishment of the first Celtic King in the Britannian royal line, rather than the birth of Christ.

** [[Follow the Leader|As a direct result]] of ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam|Gundam 0079]]'''s success with the Universal Century calendar, this trope can also be found in the majority of [[Real Robot]] series produced since.

** Apparently, somebody once did the math based on the few instances where days of the week are given for certain dates and found out that UC 001 corresponds to 2047 AD.

* In ''[[Legend of Galactic Heroes]]'', both the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance use different calendars. The story takes place in about the 35th century AD. The Empire had previously established their own timescale, and when the FPA was formed, they in turn split off from the Empire's calendar.

** Actually, the calendar used by the FPA was established when humanity first left Earth. When the Empire was founded, they created a third calendar which began on the date of the first Emperor's coronation. The FPA did not create their own calendar but instead adopted the one that was abandoned by the Empire.

* ''[[Tiger and Bunny]]'' begins in 1977 N.C. (New Century). The only hint as to the real-world date would be the show's pilot, which makes mention of the 22nd century.

 

== Comic Books ==

* The world of ''[[Nikolai Dante]]'' generally uses the Gregorian Calendar, but refers to each year as 'Year of the Tsar'.

 

== Fan Works ==

* The ''[[Central Shadow Realm]]'' fanfiction series counts from a randomly-chosen point during the construction of the titular city; those living in the city admit it's arbitrary. The months and days don't have names; dates are given as "The (x) day of the (x) month". The first story, ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2444579/1/Shadow_Realm_Fifteen Shadow Realm: Fifteen]'', took place in 5178.

 

 

== Film ==

* Played for laughs in ''[[Santa Claus Conquers the Martians]]'':

{{quote|'''Chochem:''' What time of year is it now?

'''Kimar:''' It is the middle of Septober. }}

 

== Literature ==

* [[David Eddings]]' ''[[The Belgariad]]'' uses the Alorn Calendar, which measures time in years since the cracking of the world. Additional calendars used by other nations are occasionally mentioned throughout the series.

* [[Frank Herbert]]'s ''[[Dune]]'' dates events from the establishment of the Spacing Guild's monopoly on space travel; the original novel ''Dune'' begins in the year 10,191 A.G. In addition, in ''God Emperor of Dune'', it's implied that the (3000-year) reign of the titular God Emperor Leto II has in effect become a calendar.

* The glossary of Robert Jordan's ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' books states that the world is on the third or fourth calendar since Rand, in a [[Reincarnation|previous life]], [[The End of the World as We Know It|broke the world]]. Ten-day weeks also appear at some point, though the first few books used seven-day weeks. There are also months, but most people ignore these and just go by seasons.

* [[Ursula K. Le Guin]] has scores of different calendars:

** And this is only for the city of New Crobuzon, alone. In the floating city Armada, they have completely different names for months and days of the week .

* H. Beam Piper's Terro-Human future history (e.g. ''Little Fuzzy'', ''Uller Uprising'') uses Atomic Era dating, starting the year zero A.E. at 2 December 1942 by the C.E. calendar (the date of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction). Characters occasionally speak of Nth Century Pre-Atomic dates to refer to dates before that time.

** Note that it's usually only wizards and astronomers who think of a year as 800 days long. To the average Discworlder, concerned with practicalities like harvests and weather, a Disc "year" lasts for one turn of the seasons, which takes only 400 days.

** Ankh-Morpork itself has restarted its calendar several times in its history, though dates are usually given in Unseen University's Ankh-Morpork Years. At least one of these restarts is a [[Retcon]] to make up for inconsistent dating.

** It's well worth noting that years and centuries are often named rather than numbered on Discworld. Sometimes there's a reference to a year like "1784," but more often, years are referred to as "the Year of the Diffident Squid." And the whole continuity has just recently completed the Century of the Fruitbat.

*** Careful reading of the books seems to imply that the numbered years are closely aligned with our own, and it is currently 2010 on the disc as well.

* In Jack Vance's ''[[The Demon Princes]]'', the year zero corresponds to the year 2000 A.D. Therefore the first book taking place in 1040 means that it is really 3040 A.D.

* In ''[[Zones of Thought|A Deepness in The Sky]]'' by [[Vernor Vinge]], interstellar traders have done away with not just years and months, but also with days, hours and minutes. All timespans are measured in (appropriate powers-of-thousands of) seconds, with dates simply being the number of seconds since the [[UNIX]] epoch (with some unspecified [[Shown Their Work|but explicitly mentioned]] relativistic frame corrections) -- though in-universe [[Future Imperfect|it is most commonly thought that the zero-second was at the first moon landing]]. Settled planets all have their own calendars, of course. One way the traders know they have stayed too long is when they start using the locals' calendar.

* The ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' books count from 2103 AD (Gregorian) as 1 PD (post-Diaspora), the year that the first generation ship left Earth. The events of the books take place in the early 20th century PD (41st century AD). Planets set their years as "Year ''X'' AL (After Landing)", with days and months set as appropriate to planetary conditions. This means that a given planet will retain at least two calendars: The "Standard" (PD) year, & the "Local" (AL) year. The ones that are part of a multi-planet polity will track the capitol planet's year AL. Yay for computers.

** Evidently, the possibility of estimating time's passage by means of tides, heartbeats, sleeping habits, when the hero needs a shave, or any other ground-based phenomena never occurred to Burroughs.

*** Burroughs claimed that time in Pellucidar ''passes more swiftly for you when you're exerting yourself more''. At one point, the hero and his friend were separated and the hero had several weeks worth of adventures: fighting, running, lots of hard work. His friend merely strolled back to their lodgings, so only about an hour passed for him. It's a pity the "I'm not making this up" category has been disabled, because this nonsense ''deserves'' it.

* Brian Caswell's ''Deucalion'' uses a metric time system of years AS (After Settlement), dating from first landfall on planet Deucalion (Earth still uses conventional time).

* In Melanie Rawn's ''Exile'' series, the year is divided into 36 10-day weeks, each with a name and a patron saint, plus a handful of feast days for a total of 366 days. This replaced a system where every day had it's own patron saint. Needless to say, this particular setting has a lot of saints.

* On [[Gor]] each city-state has its own calendar, counting Year X of City Administrator Y's reign or some other locally-important event. To standardize, most city-states also count in years C.A. - Contasta Ar, "from the founding of Ar," the largest city-state. Actual book quote:

{{quote|Chronology is the despair of scholars on Gor.}}

* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' is set in the second to third century after Aegon's Landing. The seasons are random in length, but are much longer than the years, making it uncertain what a "year" actually means.

* The various chapters of ''[[Out of the Dark]]'' provide the date in both the Gregorian and the galactic standard calendar. The epilogue introduces a third calendar, replacing the Hegemony's calendar with the notation {{spoiler|"Year 1 of the Terran Empire}}.

== Live Action TV ==

* ''[[Star Trek]]'''s famous stardates, though these are much more complex than most. They also use straight-up AD/BC.

** Parodied in ''[[Futurama]]'':

{{quote|'''Zapp:''' Captain's journal. Stardate: uhhh...

'''Zapp:''' April 13... point two. }}

** Averted in ''Enterprise'', which still used the Gregorian calendar.

** The ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Deep Space Nine]]'' episode "Soldiers of the Empire" reveals that Klingons use a stardate system of their own (day in the year of Kahless).

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The End Of The World", the Doctor claims that the year to which they've traveled is "5.5/apple/26, five billion years in your future".

* ''[[Caprica]]'' introduces a twelve-month calendar using the same names as the Roman calendar: Ianuarius, Februarius, Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Iunius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December.

** The Roman months Quintilis and Sextilis were of course renamed after Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar respectively.

** Channel 27 [[Fridge Brilliance|might not be based on Earth]].

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* On ''[[Eberron]]'' a year consists of twelve months (each named after one of the twelve moons) and a week of seven days, seeming like they just came up with with fancy new names for the months and and days to seem exotic, however the months are only 28 days each, making all characters a couple of years younger in real time than they seem. Interestingly (or not, depending) there was originally one more moon, implying before the appropriate cataclysm the year and lunar cycle used to be much closer to earth's.

* A year on the planet [[Mystara]] is 336 days long, allowing for a handy calendar of twelve 28-day months. There is no distinction between the lunar and solar calendars, as new or full moons always fall on the same dates in each year. Each country has its own names for the 12 months; the chief exception is that of the shadow elves, whose year consists of 24-day months, each named for one of their religion's 14 Verses. (Being subterranean, these elves don't need to synch their calendar with celestial events, and keep track of dates only to schedule their religious ceremonies.)

** ''Inside'' Mystara, the Hollow World's stationary inner sun doesn't provide for conventional day/night or seasonal cycles. Rather, dates are tracked by the orbits of the major flying continents.

* ''[[Exalted]]'' uses a dating system starting with the founding of the (second) Realm, and has a rather different calendar inside each year also. The year is divided into 15 months (ascending, resplendent, and descending Element, where Element is one of Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Wood (not in that order)), plus five days of Calibration, when spirits are at their strongest and the gods are all partying.

** Well if you are going to pedantic about it (and I am) Calibration is not part of the year, the five days of calibration do not belong to either the year before or the year after.

** The various different regimes use different calendars, many of which will be in use at the same time in different places. The nominal "start of game" year would therefore be Realm Year 768; 4878 Dawn of Autochthonia; Year 4999 of Our Everlasting Glory and the Year of the Mouse in the Bronze Era of the 11th Epoch the Dragon-Blooded Shogunate.

** An interesting detail is that despite having 425 days, each of 25 hours, in the year, a sixteen-year-old in Creation is functionally equivalent to a sixteen-year-old on Earth.

* The German P&P System ''Das schwarze Auge''(''[[The Dark Eye]]'' in the US) has several calendar systems. The most common (at least in the Middlerealm) is one that uses a year of 365 days with 12 months of 30 days each, named after the Twelvegods (Praios, Rondra, Efferd, Travia, Boron, Hesinde, Firun, Tsa, Phex, Peraine, Ingerimm and Rahja). The five days after Rahja are called "Nameless Days" and are dedicated to the Nameless God (you better stay at home during those!). The year 0 can be either the fall of the city Bosparan, the year Emperor Hal (or Reto) ascended to the throne, etc. And that's only for those believing in the Twelvegods...

* The ''[[Iron Kingdoms]]'' use a calendar where 7 days make a week, 4 weeks make a month, and there are 13 months per year. Furthermore, the days are not named, but the weeks are, and the whole thing is based around the cycles of the planet's 3 moons. Every 3 years, all 3 moons are new on the same night, which makes an extra day on the calendar. This 'Leap Day' is celebrated in a festival called The Longest Night.

* In ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]]'', Imperial calendar counts the years from the coronation of Sigmar, an event marking the birth of the Empire (canonically the game is set in 26th century). The year is 400 days long and divided into 12 months with six with intercalary holidays, while weeks are eight days long. Other nations use similar calendars, usually numbering the years from the founding of respective state (e.g. 977 IC for Bretonnia, 1524 IC for Kislev). And the calendar of High Elves is divided into epochs of variable length, each one referring to the reign of the particular Phoenix King (very similar to the Japanese eras). Wood Elves, Ungols and other nomadic tribes use various lunisolar calendars.

 

== Video Games ==

* Played in the MMORPG ''[[EVE Online]]''. One of the EVE chronicles discusses how the four empires decided on a common calendar system. They ended up using the Gregorian calendar, and they date of the decision became January 1, year 0. The months of the EVE calendar match up with those in real life. Years are done a little differently; the year of the game's launch, 2003, corresponds with the in-game year 105. 2008 is referred to in-game as year 110.

** Averted in the Amarr Empire, where they still count from Anno Domini (As of 2009, the current in-game year is 23347 AD and 111 YC). Also, it seems reasonable to assume that the other empires have their own calendars. One has been mentioned for the Gallente Federation - The Age of Rouvenor (AR), with Year 0 established when king Doule Dos Rouvenor III rose to power in 21714 AD.

** It was the year the dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens was born: given his contributions to the fields of mathematics and astronomy, and the fact that he was one of the first to speculate about the existence of extraterrestrials, it may be viewed as a starting date as good as another, given the kind of universe that is Starcraft.

*** Seeing as how the UED was formed out of the UPL due to the discovery of aliens in the koprulu sector, it would seem that they chose the date because of Christiaan Huygens speculations on extraterrestrials. Which would make for the fun realization that this calendar is fairly new, as aliens had only been discovered several months before the UED invasion.

** In the ''Wonderful Life'' games, there are still four seasons, but only ''ten'' days per season (with no designation for days of the week).

** Averted in ''My Little Shop'', which, like ''[[Animal Crossing]]'', uses your Wii's system calendar.

** Strangely enough (or, more likely, so as not to confuse the players even more), all four calendars have the same length of the year.

* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' counts, since it has ''[[Gundam]]''. Here are a few examples

** [[Super Robot Wars Judgement]] takes place on [[Gundam Seed|Cosmic Era year 70]]

* The ''[[Dragon Age]]'' universe actually has multiple calendars. The most widely-used one is the Chantry calendar, which groups time into 100-years Ages, and which starts with the founding of the Chantry. In the year before a new age is set to begin, the Chantry look for portents to determine the name of the upcoming age, with the name reflecting major events that will happen during those hundred years. The Tevinter Imperium has its own calendar that starts with its founding, and the elves have their own calendar that begins with the founding of Arlathan. [http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Ages See here for more info.]

* In both ''[[Xenogears]]'' and ''[[Xenosaga]]'', humanity switches to the "Transcend Christ" calendar, with AD 2510 as TC 1.

* ''[[Escape Velocity|EV Nova]]'' years use the suffix "NC", for "New Calendar". The game starts in 1177 NC; 0 NC was 2780 AD, the year FTL inventor Omata Kane died.

** The Terrans still use Earth's calendar, understandably.

* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' has a variation on the Gregorian calendar, although with the names of minerals for the months.

* In ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'', a subversion: The game begins in AD 2101 and you presumably continue to follow the Gregorian calendar, but for whatever reason you now them "Mission Years" (MY). One imagines that this is rather confusing to anyone on Planet who cares to think about it.

 

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Orion's Arm]]'' counts the years starting with the moon landing (AT, After Tranquilitate).

* ''[[Tasakeru]]'': The Sankami calendar [[Word of God|was intentionally designed]] to be convertible to Earth-calendar format.

 

== Western Animation ==

* In an episode of ''[[Doug]]'', an extended fantasy sequence involving Quailman has a villain based on Mr. Bone, known as the Rulemeister, wipe out weekends from the timeline, forcing school students to attend school every single day (with no weekends on which to relax on). After Quailman defeats the Rulemeister by dropping a [[Logic Bomb]] of sorts on the Rulemeister, Quailman brings back weekends and adds an eighth day, "Funday," to the week, something that the narrator erroneously describes as "slowing down the Earth's rotation."

* On ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'', all the months are [[Egopolis|named after]] Lucius. (Lucember, Lucapril, etc.)

{{quote|'''Homer''': Lousy Smarch weather,}}

* On ''[[Family Guy]]'', NBC invented Catillsday so they could have another ''Dateline''.

 

== Real Life ==

* There have also been attempts to create calendars for other planets (and moons) in the solar system in case we need to live there someday. The most developed is the Darian calendar for Mars, which has 24 months of 28 Martian days each (called ''sols'', so we [[Two of Your Earth Minutes|don't confuse them with Earth days]]). There's ''already'' been arguments on what epoch to use (i.e. when Year Zero was).

** One would think that would be better decided when we actually ''get'' there.

** A rather peculiar one is the Iranian calendar. It can justifiably claim to be both one of the oldest and one of the newest calendars in wide use. Oldest, because the Iranians have had some sort of unique calendar for as long as they've been around; at least one of these remains the official calendar for Zoroastrian worship. Newest, because the calendar as it stands was invented in the 11th century (CE), and it combines the mathematical/calculating elements of the Hindu calendar (the most important of which is a highly complex system of calculating when to have the next leap year), month divisions based on the Chinese-Uighur calendar (the signs of the Zodiac), with the ancient Iranian calendar providing the date of the new year (the ancient spring festival of Nowruz, on the vernal equinox, during which men jump over bonfires and hope their crotches don't get set alight), and the Islamic epoch date (i.e. Year Zero is the year of the Hijra). As a result, the Iranian calendar is often called the Solar Hijri calendar. The Solar Hijri year for 2011-2012 is 1390 (note the 42-year difference between it and the Islamic, or Lunar Hijri year!).

** Discordians have a calendar that is divided into five 73-day seasons (Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, Aftermath), with five-day weeks (Sweetmorn, Boomtime, Pungenday, Prickle-Prickle, Setting Orange), and two holidays a season, one on the fifth day and one on the fiftieth. The zero-point of the Discordian calendar is 1166 BCE, so 2008 AD would be 3174 Year of our Lady of Discord. Every fourth year includes a leapday analogue called St. Tib's Day, which has caused some unintended mathematical confusion as to whether the Discordian Calendar is meant to align with the Gregorian or Julian calendar.

* In the Finnish language, every month really is called "______ Moon". For example, December is "Joulukuu", "Christmas moon".

** The same is true in Chinese. first-moon, second-moon, third-moon, etc. (一月,二月,三月...) Days of the week are handled similarly: 星期/周一,周二,周三.

*** The custom is common among Semitic languages; the Arabic days of the week (Al-Ahad, al-Ithnayn, al-Thulatha'...) mostly translate to "First, Second, Third...," but Friday is "al-Jumu`ah," or "Gathering" (because it's the day of praying together in the mosque) and Saturday is "al-Sabt" (from the same root as "Shabbat," chiefly because the Muslim Sabbath was on Saturday until the Jews of Medina pissed Muhammad off). Interestingly, this allows the days of the week to line up with the workweek in some countries; some Arabic-speaking countries (e.g. Egypt) have Friday-Saturday weekends, meaning that the workweek starts on "First Day."

*** Sunday, Monday, Third Day sounds silly - to English speakers. Nevertheless, that's what happens in Slavic languages, such as Polish, which goes Niedziela (Rest), Poniedzialek (After Rest), Wtorek (Tuesday - second), Sroda (Wednesday - Middle), Czwartek (Thursday - fourth), Piatek (Friday - fifth) and Sobota (Sabbath). Russian works similarly, with the substitution of Voskreseniye - Resurrection - for Sunday. The two modern Baltic languages, Latvian and Lithuanian, ''have'' however ditched the non-numeral names and just number the week Firstday to Seventhday from Monday to Sunday respectively.

* Interestingly, the Egyptian one is still used by the Coptic Orthodox Church as the [[wikipedia:Coptic calendar|Coptic calendar]]. [[Augustus Caesar]] modified it to be in sync with the Julian calendar, but that's about all that's changed since the days of the Pharaohs.

** Another interesting tidbit: the Coptic Church uses as its epoch the accession of the [[The Roman Empire|Roman Emperor]] Diocletian (in 284), noted for his persecutions of Christians, which by that time was very strong in Egypt. As a result, the Coptic calendar is often marked with the abbreviation A.M.--''Anno Martyrum'' (Year of the Martyrs).

* Heck, there are ''dozens'' of calendar systems in place, including the Hindu calendar, the Zoroastrian calendar, the Ethiopic calendar, and several other local ones. Just look it up on [[Wikipedia]].

* [[wikipedia:Renaming of Turkmen months and days of week, 2002|Turkmenistan's rubber-stamp government decided to rename their entire calendar, INCLUDING the days of the week, in 2002.]] This was a basic decree by their somewhat insane leader, Saparmurat Niyazov, aka the Turkmenbashi and [[Cloudcuckoolander|one-time administrative assistant to the Mayor of Cloudcuckooland]]. Since his death, such decrees have been removed from the book of law.

* The North Korean calendar begins with the birth of [[Papa Wolf|Kim Il Sung]] (1912 AD) as year Juche 1 in Gregorian format; all pre-calendar history uses the Gregorian calendar.

* In [[Ancient Greece]], every polis had its own calendar, with years named after government officials (like ephors in Sparta or archons in Athens). These calendars were very often very quirky (for instance, Athens had a calendar of ''ten'' months, which had some interesting connections to the Athenian constitution).<ref>If you must insist, the citizens of Athens were divided into ten tribes. Every year, 50 male members of each tribe were selected--by lot!--to sit on the "Council of 500", aka the ''Boule''. The ''Boule'' set the agenda of the ''Ekklesia'', or Popular Assembly (the assembly of all free male citizens of Athens, which had final authority on everything), and certain other responsibilities as well. Of these, the most important of was that of sitting vigil. Each of the ten Athenian tribes was assigned a month. During that month, its 50 members of the ''Boule'' were expected to remain at the ''Boule'''s building day and night in order to respond quickly to any crisis that might arise. Convenient, isn't it, that there were ten months and ten tribes?</ref> Must have been a headache with over a thousand different states in place. The historians sometimes used the Olympic games for counting the years, but no one else did.

* Javanese people in Indonesia uses month names taken from Islamic calendar. The month names are Sura (Muharram), Sapar (Safar), Mulud (Rabi al-awwal), Bakda Mulud (Rabi al-thani), Jumadil Awal (Jumada al-awwal), Jumadil Akhir (Jumada al-thani), Rejeb (Rajab), Ruwah (Sha'aban), Pasa (Ramadhan), Sawal (Shawwal), Sela (Dhul al-Qi'dah) and Besar (Dhul al-Hijjah).

 

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[[Category:Settings]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

[[Category:Time Tropes]]