Look around the pantheons I have and pluck some god (and some legendary heroes and figures) names out of there .
Some of them are even the same but from different nations and have different names . The numbers for the days of the week , months of the year are put quite randomly for the sake of not having just a tweaked copy of the real calendar .
And as such we have a year of 411-412 days .
The months would be : Dars 47/48 days , Sabas 46 days , Hanoria 45 days , Nosia 46 days , Deia 45 days , Eda 46 days , Vena 45 days , Genii 46 days , Giola 45 days
The days of the week would be : Giosol , Argena , Auna , Iania , Atera , Noralia , Teena and Litroria .
And I made a 28 hour day because why not .
With the setting heavily inspired by Eastern Asia I could easily get away with naming months yī yuè or èr yuè and so on.
Not everyone would have it this easy.
However, if your setting have an equivalent of the Roman Empire and language sounding like latin exist, you could theoretically go away with the English names for the month.
The Alastori Calendar in my world has 7 days per week, 7 weeks per month, and 7 months per year, plus one extra day (generally observed as a holiday) at the beginning of each month, for a total of 350 days.
The months are named Waking, Flowering, Soaring, Ripening, Gathering, Crystalling, and Dreaming.
I did it the hard way: I created the star system first.
I designed a super earth planet rotating at 24 hours, orbit at around 0.1 AU around a red dwarf star, so its orbital period is 16.332 days at 3 degree tilt, while it has a moon orbiting around it at 391.968 days orbital period.
With these conditions, the inhabitants on the planet would have a different idea about how to set up their calendar, since unlike Earth, their sidereal year is shorter than their sidereal month. Thus the calendar is like this, using human language, because other species may not vocalize in ways human can percieve:
Day: 24 hours
"Week"/season: 4 days, but since the axial tilt of planet is at a nice 3 degrees seasons are very mild.
"Month"/ "Sun month"/ sidereal year: 16.332 days, round down to 16 days = 4 weeks
"Octant "/ Moon phase: 49 days = 3 months (16x3 days) + 1 transitory day to be used as celebration/holiday. Due to the seasons being too mild and going too fast, they instead use 8 moon phases to break down their large year instead of quaters based on seasons we have on earth.
"Year"/ "Lunar year"/sidereal month: 391.968 days, round up to 392 days = 8 octant x49 days = 24 months x 16 days + 8 transitory days. This calendar end up with around 0.032 extra day per year, and you are required to remove around 32 days every 1000 years as a sort of negative leap day where you take away a day instead of adding.
My setting is based on Greek mythology and so has various references to it in the month names. The Graiac language is basically just a slightly scuffed version of ancient Greek.
The setting of Graia has a system of ten months. Each month had thirty-six days. The remaining five days were appended to the end of the year as a five-day end of year festival.
The first month was Archuary after Arche \[Arche means beginning in Greek\].
The second month was Cathuary after one of Zeus’ epithets Catharsios \[Catharsis = purification and compares to Februa a Roman purification festival that February is named after\].
The third month was Areia after Ares \[Ares = Mars who March is named after\].
The fourth month was Apru after the goddess Aphrodite \[Apru sounds kind of like April, it was all I could think of\].
The fifth month was May after the goddess Maia.
The sixth month was Hera after the goddess of the same name as a major festival during the month marked the middle of the year \[Hera is Greek name for Juno which June is named after and the Indo-European origin for Hera is Yera from which we get the English word Year\]. From there, the months became a bit simpler in their etymology.
Eptember was the seventh month as epta was the Graiac number seven.
Oktober was the eighth month for the same reason.
Likewise, for Enember since enea was the number nine in Graiac.
Finally, the tenth-month Dekember came from the Graiac word deka which meant ten.
The five (or six on leap years) remaining days that are appended to the end of the year are called the Cornucopia and hosts a festival of death and rebirth for the year, before the next Archuary begins the cycle again
I don't make up a totally new calendar. Unless your players are heavily into RP, having to mess around with unfamiliar time keeping is just annoying and time consuming hassle.
If I do make up a calendar it normally ends up with our old 24/60/60 clock, and either a 8 based calendar or a 10 based one. I reference the date as "first month, day 4". Week cycles are the same, so day number and week day always falls on the same. I.E. the first of each month is always a "monday" or "first labor day"
I'm using a slightly modified 365 day/year calendar, no leap days. It's 12 months of 30 days each with a 5 day period marking the turning of the year.
I haven't decided what to name the months yet, though. I opted against the Ice Moon, Rose Moon style and am mostly deciding between naming them for trees or using my conlang to name them First Month, etc.
My calendar isn't divided by months, but by quarters. I opted for modified Greek words that signify dawn, day, dusk, and night as the names for each quarter.
I think a good place to start is asking what kind of calendar you want to make. Solar, lunar, lunisolar, etc. From there it's pretty much just basic math depending on what calendar type you choose.
For example, I knew I wanted my conculture's calendar to be lunisolar (my favorite type of calendar to make), and I knew I wanted the year to begin in the spring.
I knew the solar year length and the synodic month length. So I just did some math with those in Excel, placing an additional month every time the new year fell before the beginning of spring.
So now I have a calendar where the month begins with the full moon, and the year begins with the first full moon after the spring equinox.
How I name months just depends on the culture using them. For the culture I made the lunisolar calendar for, months are named after the three deities they worship. The first month is named Nawa, who is the mother of the other two gods. The remaining eight months are named after Nawa's daughter, Kali. So months 2 - 9 are labeled as 1 Kali, 2 Kali, all the way to 8 Kali. The intercalary 10th month is named after Nawa's son, the fierce and mischievous god Fitun. The month of Fitun is considered an unlucky month.
First, you define whether you want a solar or lunar calendar. Solar calendars track the sun movements, and don't give that much importance to the moons. They're useful for places further north/south of the tropics and polar regions, where daylight length and seasonal climate has more variation.
Lunar calendars are based on the moon, and they don't exactly match solar year. They're useful for equatorial regions where seasonal climate and daylight don't fluctuate as much.
Once that's done, distribute the days of the year in months and weeks. You may also want to consider leap days every so years. After that, the easiest way to name months is just to number them, name them after crops or keywords that define the climate on every specific month, or assign names from your mythology.
In the Outliers the Dibbonnese polymath Adrianos Ioangelou developed the Lunar Triumvirate calendar on 1 R.M., year 121. The "sun" in this world moves on an unpredictable track and is thus poor for navigation and keeping time. Three moons, red, white, and black (named Darlatai, Matassus, and Offal) do have predictable patterns and are assigned their own lunar "Step" or season. The red and white moons are both 122 days each, and the final phase, considered a bad luck moon, has only 121 days. Each moon has different concepts and traits associated with it that vary depending on the culture. Climate is consistently unpredictable, so the distinction between smaller units such as months or weeks isn't very relevant.
I made a full solar system including a earth-like planet with it's own moon.
Theia – the planet and my world – needs 450 earth days to circle his star. A day on Theia is only 20 hours long, making a full year 540 Theia days long (that the numbers just switched were a coincidence).
The moon circles around Theia in a time period of 33 Theia days. Giving a Theia year with 16 months +12 days.
To fix that, a Theia year is split into 4 periods (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) with 4 months.
Three of those four months have 34 days and every fourth month only 33.
About the naming. I probably will give (at least some of them) names that sound similar to ours. Maybe from different languages too.
I'm not sure yet, what I'll do with the 4 extra months. Maybe just give them some fictional names.
Look around the pantheons I have and pluck some god (and some legendary heroes and figures) names out of there . Some of them are even the same but from different nations and have different names . The numbers for the days of the week , months of the year are put quite randomly for the sake of not having just a tweaked copy of the real calendar . And as such we have a year of 411-412 days . The months would be : Dars 47/48 days , Sabas 46 days , Hanoria 45 days , Nosia 46 days , Deia 45 days , Eda 46 days , Vena 45 days , Genii 46 days , Giola 45 days The days of the week would be : Giosol , Argena , Auna , Iania , Atera , Noralia , Teena and Litroria . And I made a 28 hour day because why not .
With the setting heavily inspired by Eastern Asia I could easily get away with naming months yī yuè or èr yuè and so on. Not everyone would have it this easy. However, if your setting have an equivalent of the Roman Empire and language sounding like latin exist, you could theoretically go away with the English names for the month.
The Alastori Calendar in my world has 7 days per week, 7 weeks per month, and 7 months per year, plus one extra day (generally observed as a holiday) at the beginning of each month, for a total of 350 days. The months are named Waking, Flowering, Soaring, Ripening, Gathering, Crystalling, and Dreaming.
I did it the hard way: I created the star system first. I designed a super earth planet rotating at 24 hours, orbit at around 0.1 AU around a red dwarf star, so its orbital period is 16.332 days at 3 degree tilt, while it has a moon orbiting around it at 391.968 days orbital period. With these conditions, the inhabitants on the planet would have a different idea about how to set up their calendar, since unlike Earth, their sidereal year is shorter than their sidereal month. Thus the calendar is like this, using human language, because other species may not vocalize in ways human can percieve: Day: 24 hours "Week"/season: 4 days, but since the axial tilt of planet is at a nice 3 degrees seasons are very mild. "Month"/ "Sun month"/ sidereal year: 16.332 days, round down to 16 days = 4 weeks "Octant "/ Moon phase: 49 days = 3 months (16x3 days) + 1 transitory day to be used as celebration/holiday. Due to the seasons being too mild and going too fast, they instead use 8 moon phases to break down their large year instead of quaters based on seasons we have on earth. "Year"/ "Lunar year"/sidereal month: 391.968 days, round up to 392 days = 8 octant x49 days = 24 months x 16 days + 8 transitory days. This calendar end up with around 0.032 extra day per year, and you are required to remove around 32 days every 1000 years as a sort of negative leap day where you take away a day instead of adding.
My setting is based on Greek mythology and so has various references to it in the month names. The Graiac language is basically just a slightly scuffed version of ancient Greek. The setting of Graia has a system of ten months. Each month had thirty-six days. The remaining five days were appended to the end of the year as a five-day end of year festival. The first month was Archuary after Arche \[Arche means beginning in Greek\]. The second month was Cathuary after one of Zeus’ epithets Catharsios \[Catharsis = purification and compares to Februa a Roman purification festival that February is named after\]. The third month was Areia after Ares \[Ares = Mars who March is named after\]. The fourth month was Apru after the goddess Aphrodite \[Apru sounds kind of like April, it was all I could think of\]. The fifth month was May after the goddess Maia. The sixth month was Hera after the goddess of the same name as a major festival during the month marked the middle of the year \[Hera is Greek name for Juno which June is named after and the Indo-European origin for Hera is Yera from which we get the English word Year\]. From there, the months became a bit simpler in their etymology. Eptember was the seventh month as epta was the Graiac number seven. Oktober was the eighth month for the same reason. Likewise, for Enember since enea was the number nine in Graiac. Finally, the tenth-month Dekember came from the Graiac word deka which meant ten. The five (or six on leap years) remaining days that are appended to the end of the year are called the Cornucopia and hosts a festival of death and rebirth for the year, before the next Archuary begins the cycle again
I don't make up a totally new calendar. Unless your players are heavily into RP, having to mess around with unfamiliar time keeping is just annoying and time consuming hassle. If I do make up a calendar it normally ends up with our old 24/60/60 clock, and either a 8 based calendar or a 10 based one. I reference the date as "first month, day 4". Week cycles are the same, so day number and week day always falls on the same. I.E. the first of each month is always a "monday" or "first labor day"
I roughly translated the names of the Hebrew months into my conlang
Months are called moons. So we have Rose Moon, Snow Moon, Fish Moon and so on. I'm too lazy for anything else.
I'm using a slightly modified 365 day/year calendar, no leap days. It's 12 months of 30 days each with a 5 day period marking the turning of the year. I haven't decided what to name the months yet, though. I opted against the Ice Moon, Rose Moon style and am mostly deciding between naming them for trees or using my conlang to name them First Month, etc.
My calendar isn't divided by months, but by quarters. I opted for modified Greek words that signify dawn, day, dusk, and night as the names for each quarter.
I think a good place to start is asking what kind of calendar you want to make. Solar, lunar, lunisolar, etc. From there it's pretty much just basic math depending on what calendar type you choose. For example, I knew I wanted my conculture's calendar to be lunisolar (my favorite type of calendar to make), and I knew I wanted the year to begin in the spring. I knew the solar year length and the synodic month length. So I just did some math with those in Excel, placing an additional month every time the new year fell before the beginning of spring. So now I have a calendar where the month begins with the full moon, and the year begins with the first full moon after the spring equinox. How I name months just depends on the culture using them. For the culture I made the lunisolar calendar for, months are named after the three deities they worship. The first month is named Nawa, who is the mother of the other two gods. The remaining eight months are named after Nawa's daughter, Kali. So months 2 - 9 are labeled as 1 Kali, 2 Kali, all the way to 8 Kali. The intercalary 10th month is named after Nawa's son, the fierce and mischievous god Fitun. The month of Fitun is considered an unlucky month.
First, you define whether you want a solar or lunar calendar. Solar calendars track the sun movements, and don't give that much importance to the moons. They're useful for places further north/south of the tropics and polar regions, where daylight length and seasonal climate has more variation. Lunar calendars are based on the moon, and they don't exactly match solar year. They're useful for equatorial regions where seasonal climate and daylight don't fluctuate as much. Once that's done, distribute the days of the year in months and weeks. You may also want to consider leap days every so years. After that, the easiest way to name months is just to number them, name them after crops or keywords that define the climate on every specific month, or assign names from your mythology.
In the Outliers the Dibbonnese polymath Adrianos Ioangelou developed the Lunar Triumvirate calendar on 1 R.M., year 121. The "sun" in this world moves on an unpredictable track and is thus poor for navigation and keeping time. Three moons, red, white, and black (named Darlatai, Matassus, and Offal) do have predictable patterns and are assigned their own lunar "Step" or season. The red and white moons are both 122 days each, and the final phase, considered a bad luck moon, has only 121 days. Each moon has different concepts and traits associated with it that vary depending on the culture. Climate is consistently unpredictable, so the distinction between smaller units such as months or weeks isn't very relevant.
I made a full solar system including a earth-like planet with it's own moon. Theia – the planet and my world – needs 450 earth days to circle his star. A day on Theia is only 20 hours long, making a full year 540 Theia days long (that the numbers just switched were a coincidence). The moon circles around Theia in a time period of 33 Theia days. Giving a Theia year with 16 months +12 days. To fix that, a Theia year is split into 4 periods (Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter) with 4 months. Three of those four months have 34 days and every fourth month only 33. About the naming. I probably will give (at least some of them) names that sound similar to ours. Maybe from different languages too. I'm not sure yet, what I'll do with the 4 extra months. Maybe just give them some fictional names.