The Calenders of Middle Earth

[Snowdog]

There are many and are covered in good detail. Here I have the complete calender as used by men that has been mined from the Appendices at the end of Return of the King.

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Yestarë: 'First-day', the name used in the Elves' calendars, and those derived from them, for the first day of the year. The actual date of yestarë varied from calendar to calendar; according to the Reckoning of Rivendell, it fell on modern 28 March, while in the calendars of the Númenóreans and their descendants, its modern equivalent would be 22 December.

Narvinyë: The first month in the calendars of the Men of Middle-earth, approximately equivalent to modern January (though in fact running from modern 23 December to 21 January). Its name means 'new year' (or, literally, 'new sun').

Nénimë:The second month in the calendars of the Men of Middle-earth, approximately equivalent to modern February (though in fact running from modern 22 January to 20 February).

Súlimë: The third month of the year, according to the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, lying between Nénimë and the feast-day of Tuilérë. On a modern calendar, Súlimë ran between 21 February and 22 March.

Víressë: The fourth month of the year, according to the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, following the spring feast-day of Tuilérë. On a modern calendar, Víressë ran between 24 March and 22 April.

Lótessë: The fifth month of the year, according to the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, following Víressë. On a modern calendar, Lótessë ran between 23 April and 22 May.

Nárië: The sixth month of the year, according to the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, following Lótessë, and preceding Loëndë, the feast of Midsummer. On a modern calendar, Nárië ran between 23 May and 21 June.

Loëndë: Also known, especially by the Hobbits, as Midyear's Day, Loëndë was the day that fell in the middle of the year and was an important feature in many of the calendars of Middle-earth. On a modern calendar, Midyear's Day would be 22 June.

Cermië: The seventh month of the year, according to the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, following Loëndë, and preceding Urimë. On a modern calendar, Cermië ran between 23 June and 22 July, in a normal year.

Urimë: The eighth month of the year, according to the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, following Cermië, and preceding Yavannië. On a modern calendar, Urimë ran between 23 July and 21 August, in a normal year.

Yavannië: The ninth month of the year, according to the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, following Urimë, and preceding the autumn feast of Yáviérë. On a modern calendar, Yavannië ran between 22 August and 20 September, in a normal year. Ivanneth

Yáviérë: The harvest feast-day of the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, lying between the months of Yavannië and Narquelië. On a modern calendar, Yáviérë would have fallen on 21 September.

Narquelië: The tenth month of the year, according to the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, following the harvest feast of Yáviérë, and preceding Hísimë. On a modern calendar, Narquelië ran between 22 September and 21 October.

Hísimë: The eleventh month of the year, according to the Stewards' Reckoning of Gondor, following Narquelië, and preceding the last month, Ringarë. On a modern calendar, Hísimë would run between 22 October and 20 November.

Girithron: The Sindarin name for the twelfth month of the year, according to the calendars of Men, following Hithui or Hísimë. On a modern calendar, Girithron ran between 21 November and 20 December.

Ringarë: The last month in the calendars of the Men of Middle-earth, approximately equivalent to modern December (though in fact running from modern 21 November to 20 December).

Mettarë: The last day of the year; to the Elves, whose calendar started in spring, this was modern 6 April, but to the Dúnedain in Middle-earth, Mettarë fell in winter, on modern 21 December.
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J.R.R. Tolkien states in the appendix that the Dúnedain used Sindarin names, so possibly they used Girithron for the 12th month instead of Ringarë? The findings on Ringarë seem to be vague but I assume it was used in the Stewards Reckoning.

[Jnyusa]

That is cool, Snowdog!

I never paid much attention to details like these in the Appendices but I know they were very important to Tolkien for the integrity of the world he (sub)created.

Can you think of a way for us to incorporate the use of these calendars into the Hall of Fire? I haven't set up anything in our phpbb calendar yet, but maybe when we enter things we could give their Middle Earth day as well, since we can't actually change the names of the months in our online calendar here.

Jn

[Alatar]

There's a really nice perl module that may be of use for that Jnyusa. It converts dates to Shire calendar. Unfortunately it's probably not possible to get running on a PHPBBer site.

http://backpan.perl.org/authors/id/T/TB ... .02.readme

NAME
Date::Tolkien::Shire.pm

DESCRIPTION
This is an object-oriented module to convert dates into the Shire
Calender as presented in the Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. It
includes converting epoch time to the Shire Calendar (you can also get
epoch time back), comparison operators, and a method to print a
formatted string containing that does something to the effect of on this
date in history -- pulling events from the Lord of the Rings.

The biggest use I can see in this thing is in a startup script or
possible to keep yourself entertained in an otherwise boring app that
includes a date. If you have any other ideas/suggestions/uses, etc.,
please let me know. I am curious to see how this gets used (if it gets
used that is).

[Jnyusa]

Could we run it offline, like on someone's hard drive, and then just fill in on our calendar the Shire dates that it generates?

We can't actually change months and days on the calendar at the top of the page, but, for example, my birthday is June 9, so if "Jnyusa's birthday" appeared under June 9 on our calendar, we could type below it, 18 Narië, and do that for every entry that appears.

I've done comparative calendars on a spreadsheet before and I think I could manage it.

Jn

[Alatar]

That would be no problem. If you like I can run a script to generate the calendar year with Dates and Events?

Let me know.

Alatar

[Jnyusa]

Alatar, that would be SUPER!

Yes, please do so when you have the time.

Meanwhile I'll figure out how to admin the calendar here ... haven't touched it yet. and I'll put Snowdog's calendar on a spreadsheet to match up all the dates.

Jn

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Oooh, what a cool idea. Thanks, Snowdog, Al, and Jn.

[scirocco]

I did a little comparison of all the Third and Fourth age calendars on my own website, if anyone's interested. Not as clever as a converter, but you can see the reasoning behind it, which you can't with a converter. You can find it here.

I also believe that Appendix D is ambiguous, and there are two possible answers to any conversion question, depending on which of two statements you believe.

I got inspired to do it after the "Happy Downfall of Sauron Day" thread which used to pop up on TORC every year on the wrong day...

[Jnyusa]

scirocco -

Hi! Thanks for joining us in this forum. We've been anticipating your arrival.

Another Tolkien website? How cool. It will be later this evening before I can get over there, but I'm anxious to see it.

Jn

ETA: meanwhile I got a chance to look at your calendar. What a great spreadsheet!

We're talking about putting an announcement in the welcome forum that will link to other sites that share members or topics with us. Would you mind if we added that link to our list when we create it?

I think it might be a bit much to put four different ME dates next to every event on our calendar. I do like the Mardil/Westron month names the best. But maybe our other members can take a look at that, at some might prefer the Shire dates.

Jn

[Snowdog]

Being that Mettarë (the last day of the year) and Yestarë (New years day) come one right after another, Valina Yestarë!

[Jnyusa]

Valina Yestarë, Snowdog!

Thank you for posting that! - I missed it completely, but have added it to the calendar. I wanted to put it up earlier but haven't been able to type with both hands for the past couple days.

Jn

edit: Oh, darn! I can't add things that have already happened.

Our New Year will be the 11th day of the Elvish new year. I'll just have to add the greeting to our own new year.

[Snowdog]

(18 years later) In revisiting this, I realized I never credited the interactive calendar (which works quite good these days) on Encyclopedia of Arda for a lot of the information. The initial layout was originally on a Middle Earth Rangers forum back in these days (now defunct). I have used this naming convention in a lot of my fanfics over the two decades.

[Frelga]

Very cool. This would have been an awesome resource in my RPing days.

[Alatar]

Speaking of which...

[Snowdog]

Very cool. This would have been an awesome resource in my RPing days.

Speaking of which...

... I sort of dropped the ball on that. Moving into a new house has things fall by the wayside. Let me go see if I can sort something out...

[Frelga]

I think everyone I hoped to attract is in the throes of real life, myself included.