Different calendars around the world

I like to hear about different calendars and different ways of tracking time around the world other than hours minutes and seconds. Islamic countries used a calendar that starts with Muhammad right? I wouldn’t know what date it is in Saudi right now, does the average Saudi know its 2010? Do companies in China and the Middle East do business using the Christian calendar? Any place use units other than hours minutes and seconds?

The Gregorian calendar is the practical default calendar for all countries now. It has two advantages: One, it is used by most of the developed world. Therefore, if you are doing business with a wider audience than your local village, you know about the Gregorian calendar. The other main advantage is that it is fixed. You know the dates out for the next thousand years. If we want to meet on February 15 next year, we both know exactly which day it’ll be.

That’s because the Gregorian calendar is strictly a solar calendar while most other calendars are mostly lunar/solar. In a lunar/solar calendar, you have leap months that cannot necessarily be predicted in advance. Even when you do, there is the problem when a particular day is the first day of the month. In the Hijri (Islamic) calendar, months can have either 29 or 30 days and depend upon observation. In Saudi Arabia, they use the Umm al-Qura calendar which is like the Hijri, but has used astronomical calculations to fix the start of the months. Still, most people in the cities of Saudi Arabia know about and use the Gregorian calendar. (A side note: The Islamic calendar is strictly a lunar affair and never has leap months. Because of that, it is about six days shorter than the solar year, and the months tend to move around the calendar).

In India, there’s the national calendar, the Saka calendar, and several regional Hindu calendars. The Saka calendar is strictly a solar affair, and you can easily convert from the Gregorian to Saka day because both calendars have the same number of months and the same number of days. But, in the major cities, everyone knows the Gregorian dates and that has become the default for businesses. I am not familiar with the religious Hindu calendars which seem to be a various mix of solar, lunar, and solar/lunar affairs.

Even in China, the Gregorian calendar is used for day-to-day activities while the Chinese calendar is used mainly for religious and traditional holidays. The Chinese calendar is a lunar/solar affair, but I never quite understood how the leap months are calculated.

In Pakistan, S Arabia, India, China and pretty much every country I have visited, the Gregorian Calender was in use even in the remotest villiage.

Except for the very religious, most Israelis couldn’t tell you the Hebrew date without looking at a character. I’m not even sure myself if it’s now Tammuz or Av.

The Hebrew calendar is used only on formal occasions and on government correspondence, alongside the Gregorian date.

By “character” I of course mean “calendar”.

It’s a common mistake.

Not much to add, but in parts of Cameroon they use the Gregorian calendar for anything official, but still use the local calendars to calculate market days. Lots of villages have markets every five or eight days. Since few people had official jobs but everyone relied on the market, your average villager would be much more concerned about the local calender.

North Cameroonians (largely Muslim) would also usually think of time in terms of prayer times rather than by the clock. If you set a meeting, for example, you would likely set if for “just after second prayer” or “between the last and second-to-late prayer.” People understood hours and would use them when needed, but were more comfortable anchoring things to prayer times.

I think most areas with other calendars basically only use theirs for holidays, though.

Nitpick:

The Gregorian calendar is fixed because it is a rule-based calendar. That is, long ago, someone observed the motion of the sun and all that and then came up with fixed rules that over the long run would average out to close to what the sun is doing.

The current Hebrew calendar is also fixed, although it relies on the motion of both the sun and the moon. Thus, it is possible for any date into the future to match up each Gregorian date to a Hebrew date with no ambiguities.

The Islamic calendar is strictly lunar, but this is not why it’s not fixed. It’s not fixed because actual observation of the new moon determines the beginning of a new month (with some exceptions for cloudy days and the like), which can vary based on natural aberrations and observational difficulties. It could just as easily (and I think in Saudi Arabia it is), be fixed.

In any case, it’s not the solar/lunar thing that makes the calendar “float” or not, but whether the determination of dates is rule- or observation-based.

Ethiopia.

Note this web page from the Ethiopian government news agency. Items translated into English have dates given in the Gregorian calendar, but items in Ethiopian have a lot of “2002” strings in them, which is the current year on the Ethiopian calendar:

http://www.ena.gov.et/

I had an Ethiopian coworker, and maintenance of their calendar seems to be a cultural point of some significance:

Thailand’s calendar is the same as Western but with 543 added to the year. There is also a Thai lunar calendar, normally numbered 2 months earlier than the Chinese lunar calendar. Birth certificates, wedding invitations, etc. will show dates in both Gregorian and lunar format.

(Although our Jan 1, 2010 is the same as Thai Jan. 1, 2553, there are two or three other New Year’s Days celebrated: The Chinese New Year’s, usually in February, and the traditional Thai New Year’s in mid-April (though I’ve only heard it called “New Year’s” in northern provinces). I said 2 or 3, because there is also a festival at the Full Moon (usually November) of 12th lunar month, but it’s not called “New Year’s.” The mid-April holiday coincides approx. with hottest day of the year and beginning of rain season. Much of the country shuts down then – add a week to postal delivery times, etc. This year Bangkok had a second, unscheduled, shutdown in May :mad: )

Taiwan uses the Gregorian calendar, but sometimes specifies the year as the number of years since the founding of the Republic.

It’s a relic of the old Chinese custom of using the Emperor’s regnal year. The Republic of China was founded in 1912. North Korea counts it’s years from the birthyear of “Eternal President” Kim Il-Sung. Which is also 1912.