Changing the date

To start with let me take you back into ancient history when I had just embarked upon my university studies, and dinosaurs walked the earth and there were pterodactyls flying overhead .... And I was reading French poetry as part of my studies.

From the French poet, Charles Baudelaire (to this day still my favourite poet), the first stanza of a poem called "Spleen":

Pluviôse, irrité contre la ville entière,
De son urne à grands flots verse un froid ténébreux
Aux pâles habitants du voisin cimetière
Et la mortalité sur les faubourgs brumeux.

Which is essentially a fascinating way of saying in French that it is January or maybe February and it is dark and cold and pouring with rain! Fortunate that it wasn't snow, but anyway!

"Pluviôse" ("Rainy") was one of the 12 months of the calendar established following the French Revolution. As the revolutionaries wanted rid of all symbols of the nobility and the church, they reinvented the calendar, starting with 1792 as the year I (Roman numeral), and having 12 months each of 30 days starting from approximately September 22nd, (with additional celebration days to bring the number up to 365 or 366). There were also 10 days in a week (3 weeks a month). Employers would love that - one weekend less off per month for their employees to waste! Pay people still for a 40-hour week, think of the costs that you will save.

Not enough time to explain the entire system, Wikipedia is, for once, good on this though, so try:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
or in German
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz%C3%B6sischer_Revolutionskalender

All the month names have natural (as in "belonging to nature") leanings, so the month of my birth is the month of fruitfulness (how appropriate!) - Fructidor. According to this my wife and I no longer share the same month of birth, so she will not be too happy if we readopt this format.

As an atheist and linguist though it has often crossed my mind that we should look at revising date formats to take out the religious influences. Across the Western world it is 2012 AD (yes I realise that AD is not used in all Western countries). As a computer specialist (another of my hats), I realise the difficulty of changing millions of computer systems (from 2012 to CCXXI  if we adopt the French revolutionary calendar for example), but for an atheist keeping the "D" in the "AD" makes no sense. We could resolve the problem quickly by simply changing AD to AAD (the second "A" standing for "allegati" - Latin Genitive form for "alleged"!). As for what you would place in front  of the "C" in BC, or equivalent in other languages, please offer a suitably imaginative, yet accurate (and non-insulting) alternative!

As for the days of the week, I expect that some of you never realised that Norse mythology (in Northern European languages) or Roman mythology (in the Romance Languages of Southern Europe - French chosen in following text for convenience) were still around. Tuesday / mardi - named after Tiw or Mars, Wednesday / mercredi named after Wotan or Mercure, Thursday named after Thor or Jupiter, Friday named after Freya or Vénus, Saturday named after Saturn (interestingly Roman not Norse in English) or Saturne.

My German readers are laughingly pointing to Mittwoch ("Wotan's day or le jour de Mercure") as simply the middle of the week, no mythological influences - well for NOW at least. It has been around since the 10th century apparently. Time to stop laughing though, Jungs und Mädels - according to Wikipedia (source of all wisdom today!) - "Der Mittwoch galt im Volksglauben als Unglückstag"! Probably as there was no Norse God to pray to ....

Why would we stick with days celebrating Gods who have long since been discarded is an interesting question. It is probably an indication how much we are creatures of habit. Maybe it is time to think about changing them. The names of the French revolutionary days are nothing like as interesting as the months, so maybe we should organise a competition to come up with something appropriate.

Or maybe we need to starting asking Thor for help. Today (the day that I am writing this) would be as good as any!

Postscript - to my occasional readers in Thailand, I am fully aware that this year is actually 2555 and not 2012. To my very rare readers in Israel (probably supporters of Yosse Beilin and not the current government) I realise that it is 5773. And (tempting fate putting Muslim countries next to Israel, but I at least am open-minded! And I do not think that many people in that part of the world are that receptive to my opinions!), in the Muslim world it is apparently 1433.