I don't see a problem with your naming convention. Sounds solid enough.
Although, I do have a couple of questions: Why change the names at all? Why name it after continents? Why six months?
If my understanding is correct (or at least not so wrong), the Romans named the months of the year based on festivals (Februatio), important events in their lives (March, when warfare happened), Gods (Mars; Juno), and other important people (Julius Caesar; Augustus).
To me, it'd make a lot more sense to have a naming convention based on the culture/background of whoever named the new months.
Also, why did you choose January 1st as, well, the first day? IMHO, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Any day of the year could be the first day of the year and, if it were up to me, I'd set either the solstices or the equinoxes as the first day.
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
I'd imagine you'd use the day the calendar got borked as the first day
Oh really when?
Zzzzzzzzzz
Like so many questions of this nature, it will work if you have a reason for doing so that makes sense beyond "It would be cool". It needs to make sense from the point of view of the people who did it. If it made sense to them, your readers are more likely to accept it with only minor quibbles, if they quibble at all.
So think about how time is measured and how those measurements are named. Why six months rather than 12 (as a remnant of the old system) or 13-14 (using lunar months) or four (using the solstices and equinoxes as the start of a new month — your months would basically be the seasons, sort of). Is there some sort of thing that runs on a sixty-and-a-fraction day cycle? Has sixty (or six) gained some sort of symbolic significance? How are you going to handle the extra five days in the year? Leave them unaccounted for, so that the calendar slowly progresses through the seasons? (That could be interesting to play with...)? Create a five-day-long holiday that doesn't belong to any month? Make five of them 61 days long and the sixth only 60?
As to the naming: What relation do the continents have to the months? Why were periods of time named after landmasses? Historically, months have been named after gods or rulers; numbered; named after weather or climatic or seasonal things that are likely to occur in that time period.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
...now that you mention it, it really doesn't. It isn't even New Year's day in the new calendar (that's February 1 / Namerica 1).
The cataclysm happened on the previous day.
Memento. So that the common folk don't forget where they came from and why they are where they are right now.
I invoke Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions. Plus no way in hell are humanity going to use the calendar of a religion whose head figure is indirectly responsible for humanity's near-annihilation and sees nothing wrong with it because it was All According to Plannote .
They're not living near Earth so the seasons, solstices and equinoxes are irrelevant and only tracked by scientists.
While there are a number of planets that have been colonized, none of them share the same day/year length as Earth. Thus, all star systems have their own calendars; the new one is just a common point of reference to keep the others mostly synchronized.
That could work, considering that it would also give an obvious place for the leap day.
edited 20th Sep '14 4:07:13 AM by amitakartok
...how well does the 6 month calendar match what's actually happening on Earth, in terms of seasonal and celestial dates (solstices, etc.)?
Whose idea was it, in the setting, to use this calendar? And how widely adopted is it? For that matter, are they called the exact same word in all languages (assuming that many survived), or are there cultural variations on the same concept? Is this required, and if so how required is it?
And incidentally, what are the month names, and how were they assigned? The idea sounds alright; I'm just curious about these things.
Artisan of Auspicious Artifacts
The entire concept of months comes from the lunar cycle. Each lunar cycle is about 29.5 days and months are roughly as long.
Our month names come from two things,firstly famous figures like Janus, God of beginnings and endings, and Julius Caesar, who needs no introduction.
The second source is numbers. Sept, Oct, and Nov are Latin terms for 7,8,and 9 respectively.
Regardless, these were names of things everyone could relate to. Numbers which are the same for everyone. People and gods that everyone recognizes.
TL:DR You need to explain why a 60 day month and have names that everyone can relate to.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
You forgot December is based on Deca, Latin for 10
Then you have a problem, because that explanation doesn't hold water. Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions doesn't work considering its dead religion and the names themselves hold on out of sheer inertia.
Secondly, the modified Gregorian Calendar isn't the only one around. If for some reason it fell out of use you can't just use a new one without explaining why this new calendar also completely displaced some of the still existing, if marginalised calendars like the Chinese lunar calendar or the luni-solar calendars used by Judaism and Islam.
It has the same number of days as the Gregorian calendar, so solstices and equinoxes are always on the same day. But the months are not deliberately lined up with these dates.
Unknown. Could be the local not-quite-religious Church Militant the protagonists belong to.
Only gets officially adopted over half a century after its start but the first documents that use the new calendar notation date back to 25.AE (read "Year 25 Apotheosis Era"). The story takes place before thatnote but the meta-timestamp uses the new calendar for Flash Forward scenes.
February + March : Namerica
April + May : Samerica
June + July : Africa
August + September : Australia
October + November : Eurasia
December + January : Arctica
A calendar using the phases of a celestial body dozens of lightyears away would be kinda useless for an interstellar civilization...
edited 22nd Sep '14 3:39:54 PM by amitakartok
I have a setting that eventually invokes Earth That Was in a way that Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It. Afterwards, a new calendar system is designed that still uses Earth time as point of reference but uses January 1, 2043 as Year Zero, Day One.
Now my question is, would it be alright to merge the twelve months into six, named after the Earth's continents? For example, "November 12, 3072" would be rendered as "Eurasia 43, 1029.AE".
edited 19th Sep '14 4:56:39 PM by amitakartok