Old Earth Calendar

Dear Calendar People

The New Earth Calendar got me thinking about what the Old Earth calendar would be like.

Like the New Earth Calendar, the Old Earth calendar had months of 28 days, but instead of a leap week, it had a leap month also of 28 days. A common year had 13 months and a leap year had 14 months.

The 13 ordinary months were named:
Azo, Boyo, Cox, Dow, Evo, Fuo, Goto, Hoso, Iro, Joqo, Kop, Loo & Mono.
and the leap month as named Naf.

Leap years occurred alternately once every 22 and 23 years, so giving a mean year of 365.244444... days.

The Not So Old Earth Calendar was the same as the Old Earth Calendar, except that once every 13 leap years there was one leap year that was 23 years from both the neighbouring leap years. This created a 293-year cycle of 13 leap years whose leap months total up to one whole common year.  Indeed each of the 13 leap months took a name from a different ordinary month of the year so they could easily be counted to 13. The successive leap months starting with the leap month of the leap year that was 23 years from both its neighbours were named thus:
Gotonaf, Azonaf, Hosonaf, Boyonaf, Ironaf, Coxnaf, Joqonaf, Downaf, Kopnaf, Evonaf, Loonaf, Fuonaf & Mononaf.

Then someone thought of placing each leap month straight after the month it was named from (e.g. Azonaf after Azo)  rather than at the end of the year as done previously and lo and behold, every 294th month was a leap month!

Karl

08(02(09