Sparteye's wonderful post on the days of the week got me thinking about Maaori names for the days of the week, which led me to discover that there aren't any. That is to say, pre-European Maaori did not use a weekly cycle, but a lunar month cycle, with each day in the cycle having its own name. This link, http://www.culture.co.nz/maramataka/ shows the names of the days in the Maaori spoken where I live, and this one http://www.att.virtualclassroom.org/vc99/vc_44/po.html shows the list in another (unspecified) regional variant. Modern Maaori has transliterated the English names for weekdays, Manei, Turei, etc. Are there any other official national languages which have and use names for days of the month, rather than days of the week?

And can I add another related question? How long are weeks in other cultures? In East Nigeria they had weeks of both 4 and 8 days (and our imported "normal" 7). I am not sure if they were two rival systems, or intertwined in some way. I can't remember how the days of either system were named, although I have a feeling they might have just been numbered.
Rod

On week lengths: three consecutive days of the Basque (seven-day) week are called 'First day', 'Middle day', and 'Last day'. Presumably reflecting an ancient system.

the same issue of Natural History (April) that has the article about dying languages (visigoth thread) has as its lead article (not available on line)on the Codex Borgia, an Aztec document, represents half of a 260-day ritual calendar.
http://www.amnh.org/naturalhistory/index.html
It seems the aztec calendar had unique days-- I fox, 2 wolf, 3 deer-- which repeated once every 52 years! so in effect your the day of your birth also named the year of your birth! All of this was even more confussing since the Aztecs also had a 365 solar calendar-- (as well as the 260 ritual calendar!) -- and i have trouble enough remembering what day of the week it is!

It seems the aztec calendar had unique days-- I fox, 2 wolf, 3 deer-- which repeated once every 52 years! so in effect your the day of your birth also named the year of your birth!

AMAZING!! If I read that correctly, and if the calendar in question was the 260 day one, that means they had 13,520 uniquely named days. I wonder how many objects in the Aztec universe were not used, if they managed to come up with so many. Of course, if they used stars, that might help - I was born on star 5,000, my daughter on star 12,500 I challenge anyone here to come up with a list of 13,520 unique objects for use in naming anything. Naturally, as Aztec civilisation had not been introduced to Gutenberg, your lists must be from mental recall only.

No, they had 2 rotors-- one with numbers-- (1 to 13 as i recall, and one with names-- 20) so one year would start with 1 dog, 2 fox, 3 wolf, 4 deer, and the next year might start with 1 llama, 2 dog, 3 fox, 4 wolf, 5 deer

so it was a combination of name and number, and since they off set each year... and since in each year, you would only have one occation of 12 fox-- it named a unique date!

Another interesting twist on the Aztec 52-year calendar (hazily remembered from a Freshman college class) is that after a certain number of revolutions of that cycle were up, the Aztecs believed that the world was destroyed and created anew. There had already been 2 such rebirths, and the next one was coming due sometime in the not-too-distant future (2002 or 2012 I think). Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Flatlander

OK, helen. It's 01:30 here, and maths was never my strong suit, so I shall have to try and wrap my feeble wits around that one later.

Aha! Found it! http://people.we.mediaone.net/kelsung/other/calendar/mayan.htm

The 13 numbers and 20 names cycle to produce the 260 day ritual calendar. This meshes with the 365 day calendar* to produce the 52 year cycle. This comes to 94,900 uniquely named days, given a name for each month and a number(?) for each day of the month.

*13 months times 28 days per month plus one day "out of time".

Thanks, Faldage. I shall peruse the link after I have figured what the $%^# I'm doing up at 02:35!