Would it be lore-correct to use the word "month"? If not, is there a rough equivalent in Tamriel?

And for that matter, what about "week"?

Yes, there are months.

Sun's Dawn = Jan
First Seed = Feb
Rain's Hand = Mar
Second Seed = Apr
Mid Year = May
Sun's Height = Jun
Last Seed = Jul
Heartfire = Aug
Frost Fall = Sep
Sun's Dusk = Oct
Evening Star = Nov
Morning Star = Dec

I guess they have weeks too...

But that's not the question...the question is whether or not it is lore-correct to refer to those periods you just listed as months. I've never heard anyone use the word in-game to describe First Seed, Second Seed, etc.

I think the lore forum should have this.

Oh, well yes. They're referred to as "months". In "The Real Barenziah, it says somewhere a courier passed by "once a month". There are probably other citations where people mention months.

Thanks, that's what I needed

Also, the Arilles Tradehouse the first sentence is:


On the first seed...

Most of the time you can think of things like this as if everything was translated, without the obvious exception from words that add some flavor untranslated and with words that just don't sound right when untranslated.

I thought I read somewhere that the months started with Morning Star and ended with Evening Star...maybe I read wrong.

It could be. The Gregorian Calendar (of which ours is a highly tweaked version) is pretty arbitrary as to when a "year" starts. Other cultures start it on other days, such as April First (the fools!), or any time in late December to early January (it seems like the Hmong celebrate it a different time each year, possibly on a lunar calendar, but I don't know), or what have you. So it wouldn't be that weird for a ES year to start at the beginning of "December."

Of course, I do see your point. One wonders how the idea of a "month" got started, what with two moons out there. Is the month based on Masser, Secuda, or some combination of the two? Or is it just a rough translation into English from some more deliberately arbitrary but convenient dividing of the year?

With these kind of things, unless some unique Tamrielic term is seen, I would say we can generally assume that the real world terms would be used if applicable.

As for where the concept of a "month" would come from in the Elder Scrolls, it could be based on both Masser and Secunda, or it might just be something arbitrary that was made for the convenience of players and is not actually explained in the lore.

I'd say Month is acceptable, but I don't know about week... According to the names of the days, "Das" seems to stand for "Week," as "Middas" is Wednesday, which is the middle of the week, therefore one could assume that Middas=Midweek, yes?

Except that all the days of the week end in "das". The names of the days are just unimaginative rearrangements of the english names.

Well, that is his point. Das = week. But in the games I've heard them say 'week', so it might just be that das is either in some other language, or as Nazz says, an unimaginative rearrangements of english words.

Or a simple derivative of the names of the days in some mix of languages. For example, Swedish l?rdag, Tamrielic Loredas.