Time Marches On - Measurement of Time and the Calander in Eorzea

[Enkidoh]

This has had me thinking for a while now.

Now I know that it appears time in Eorzea is measured and recorded in some measurable form at least, with an hour being referred to as a 'bell', and that the year is mentioned as a number seeming to date back to an epoch (year zero) measured from the occurrence of the previous Umbral era (ala, the year of the 'present' setting of 1.0 was stated as being the year '1772' of the Sixth Umbral Era), but, beyond that, what other measurements and terms are used in Eorzea for measuring and recording time and it's passage?

I admit I'm interested in this because I have a family connection to timekeeping (my late father was a watchmaker by profession and I've always been interested in the time travel genre in science fiction and fantasy), and apart from what I've stated, I can't recall seeing any other terms in regards to time mentioned in the lore of the game.

For instance, how many days are there in the Eorzean week and what are the names of the days? In FFXI, the Vana'dielian week actually consisted of eight days, and each was named after one of the eight elements (ala, 'Firesday', 'Windsday' etc), with an actual elemental inclination of that day's namesake, so it made me curious if there is a similar 'elemental' naming system for Eorzea's days as well. And is there months of the year too and are they also named?

Considering there is regular traditional seasonal events analogous to real world events, this seems likely, but there appears to be no mention anywhere in the original game as to actual named months or what their names may be.

In any event, if anyone can shine any light on this subject I'll be most grateful. *tries to attract the ahriman loregod from his dimension* :3

[Anonymoose]

The dusty tomes answered many of these questions in a really "you have to read into it, get a pencil" kind of way. However, I did use the knowledge contained within them to author this page once upon a time. Does it leave anything you want to know unanswered?

Name days are unknown as far as I know, and even though there's a mountain of evidence that time locks to the elemental wheel cycling from ice to ice clockwise in the same order the tomes LIST things, there's no direct proof.

Assumptions would be tough. You could assume that they're still named after elements, or the case could be made that the days are named after astral deities and the nights are named after umbrals... but then what of the "weekends?" And why do NPCs keep referring to "sennights" and "fortnights" if these lengths would be eight and sixteen in Eorzea?

FUN FACT:
In the real world our days are named after the seven classically visible celestial bodies

Sun Day
Moon Day
Tyr's Day (Tyr being equal to the god Mars)
Woden's Day (Woden being analagous to Mercury)
Thor's Day (Thor being related to Jupiter through identification with Thunor)
Freja/Frigg's Day (Those two somewhat conflicting but rooted in Venus)
Saturn's Day (Just to give us a break)

[Myranda]

This article should answer a lot of your questions. It's got the names for units, elemental associations, the whole shebang. Most of it's from a combination of character creation and a book that I believe was available at the Thaumaturge's guild.

Also, in 1.x it was the year 6a.e.1572, not 1772 :P But yes you're right about the epochs.

Now, with your family's history of timekeeping, are you going to be our Eorzean John Harrison and build machines to determine the longitude?? We can dub them R-1 through R-4...

EDIT:
:O Moose beat me to it!!!

[Enkidoh]

Doh! I can't believe I forgot the original game clearly listed the months in character creation! I guess the blonde roots of my red hair are getting into my brain. j/k Thanks for that Gamerescape link, it's answered most of my questions.

Moose, thanks for the info about 'sennights' and 'fortnights' - I don't remember ever hearing those terms listed in 1.0 so that's very interesting (especially as here in Australia we use the term 'fortnight' to mean a period of two weeks, or fourteen days, so yeah, a week of eight days wouldn't really be appropriate then if describing a two week period of sixteen days!

As for building a machine to measure longitude, Myranda, hehe, my father's legacy is me having a reasonable knowledge of horology so I'd say you're referring to a chronograph. I never could grasp the skill needed to take up the trade myself though (plus I'm not really that good at maths ).

Anyway, thanks for that!

[Myranda]

Doh! I can't believe I forgot the original game clearly listed the months in character creation! I guess the blonde roots of my red hair are getting into my brain. j/k Thanks for that Gamerescape link, it's answered most of my questions.

Moose, thanks for the info about 'sennights' and 'fortnights' - I don't remember ever hearing those terms listed in 1.0 so that's very interesting (especially as here in Australia we use the term 'fortnight' to mean a period of two weeks, or fourteen days, so yeah, a week of eight days wouldn't really be appropriate then if describing a two week period of sixteen days!

As for building a machine to measure longitude, Myranda, hehe, my father's legacy is me having a reasonable knowledge of horology so I'd say you're referring to a chronograph. I never could grasp the skill needed to take up the trade myself though (plus I'm not really that good at maths ).

Anyway, thanks for that!

Well, really the only problem Harrison had to overcome was just making a clock keep accurate time at all, whether a simple clock or chronograph or chronometer or whatever other variation you want to use. In his day clocks would be off by seconds per day, obviously not a huge problem to overcome with today's technology. Anyways, how that corresponds to longitude is a story for another day... a good book to read on the subject is aptly titled Longitude, by Dava Sobel.

Going back to any known names for the Eorzean days.... was there a /clock or similar command that listed out the Eorzean and/or Earth time in the chatlog? That might have listed out say, "Eorzea: Iceday 6/17 5:34pm", but I don't remember ever using the command or if it existed.

[ArkhamNative]

v1 did have a /clock command, but it just spit out numbers (and later, timers for guildleve allowance and other recharges). The days of the week (or even the months) were never named. We assume the list of elements corresponds to the order of days in the week; however, no actual daily/monthly(/hourly?) elemental influence was ever detected. (And lots of crafters, at least, investigated this.)

The game also never gave the year number. We saw the days and months march through 40 in-game years during v1 but as Fernehalwes pointed out, it would be impractical and detrimental to age the characters or update the NPC dialog such as "15 years ago" about twice every three months in a game meant to last for a decade. So years effectively don't happen in-game.

I hope that "Team ARR" considers time and elements an aspect of lore, something they seem to value, rather than an unnecessary source of "stress" to the modern gamer, which they tend to discard.

[Catapult]

Just to be utterly nit-picky, Eorzra doesn't have months, they have moons, as the waxing and waning of a moon fits in four cycles of eight days. Assigning the term month is something I think we players have done.

[Bowen]

Just to be utterly nit-picky, Eorzra doesn't have months, they have moons, as the waxing and waning of a moon fits in four cycles of eight days. Assigning the term month is something I think we players have done.

Would that mean they use a Lunar calendar? (I'm not sure exactly how that works.)

If so, then how, when we choose our character's birthdays, are there twelve months that correlate with our real world ones? I'm confused.

[Catapult]

Would that mean they use a Lunar calendar? (I'm not sure exactly how that works.)

If so, then how, when we choose our character's birthdays, are there twelve months that correlate with our real world ones? I'm confused.

Correct. Each of the twelve moons (6 pairs of astral and umbral moons corresponding to the turn of the elements, astral before umbral, and associated with the respective deity) lasts for 32 days, allowing the player to equivocate them to months.

So, for example, Thal's nameday is the 10th sun of the 1st Umbral Moon. (We would mundanely think of this as the tenth of February.)

[Myranda]

Well, the etymology of month is moon, which is why even in the real world the month is about as long as a full set of phases. Of course, it doesn't quite line up exactly to a nice round number with our pesky habit of orbiting the Sun in 365.24 days, so we've fudged it a bit to make our calendar match the seasons instead of strictly following the moon (a lunisolar calendar). In the game they have no such restrictions and can artificially make them line up perfectly, which is easier to code and write lore for.

I don't think there's anything wrong in calling it a month, but yes they do refer to it in game as a moon. And they just all happen to have 32 days per month with 4 weeks of 8 days each, exactly. Because why not. Other than that it's really not that different from our real calendar at all.