There are Celtic calendar systems -- several different ones. Wikipedia has an overview here.
Partly, creating an authentic medieval feel, it helps to understand how different time was perceived back then. There are a lot of philosophers and historians who talk about this, but the idea of linear time was much less important in the middle ages -- people knew the cycle of the year, but the average person didn't know the number of the year, and probably not the name of the month. They thought in terms of Midsummer, Midwinter, Spring and Fall -- dates whose effects you can see -- plus some festivals kept along the way.
(All that stuff about people panicked by the millennium 1000 is now considered to be myth. Your average peasant farmer didn't know it was 1000.)
There are also other ways of measuring year. Years were often named -- the Romans named their years for consuls, the Chinese had that 12-year cycle with animals. Years are often named for rulers -- in Japan, for instance, "14 Showa" means the "14th year of Emperor Showa's (Hirohito's) reign" or 1940. In England, laws were described the same way until very recently -- a law passed in the 33rd year of Queen Victoria's reign was "33 Victoria."
During the French Revolution, they tried to invent a logical calendar, where every month -- and every day -- was named for something in that season. Here it is. That's long after the middle ages, but it might give you some inspiration.
On this page, if you scroll down to the Icelandic months, it'll tell you what their names mean. And that calendar is ancient.
Partly, creating an authentic medieval feel, it helps to understand how different time was perceived back then. There are a lot of philosophers and historians who talk about this, but the idea of linear time was much less important in the middle ages -- people knew the cycle of the year, but the average person didn't know the number of the year, and probably not the name of the month. They thought in terms of Midsummer, Midwinter, Spring and Fall -- dates whose effects you can see -- plus some festivals kept along the way.
(All that stuff about people panicked by the millennium 1000 is now considered to be myth. Your average peasant farmer didn't know it was 1000.)
There are also other ways of measuring year. Years were often named -- the Romans named their years for consuls, the Chinese had that 12-year cycle with animals. Years are often named for rulers -- in Japan, for instance, "14 Showa" means the "14th year of Emperor Showa's (Hirohito's) reign" or 1940. In England, laws were described the same way until very recently -- a law passed in the 33rd year of Queen Victoria's reign was "33 Victoria."
During the French Revolution, they tried to invent a logical calendar, where every month -- and every day -- was named for something in that season. Here it is. That's long after the middle ages, but it might give you some inspiration.
On this page, if you scroll down to the Icelandic months, it'll tell you what their names mean. And that calendar is ancient.
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