Talk:Civil calendar

Calendar dates of Muslim festivals
The text stated that Jews and Muslims' festival dates are expressed in civil calendar dates. this is not the case for Muslims and since I don't know how it is for Jews I chose to remove that statement entirely to avoid controversy Mohamed Ashraf (talk) 23:39, 2 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Could you provide a reliable source for this statement? Do you know if there are differences in various parts of the world? Jc3s5h (talk) 12:54, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Figure with incorrect caption
In this edit User:92.226.89.115 added the figure and caption shown.



There is a problem using this figure combined with a caption along these lines at the beginning of the article: it implies that the article is all about year numbering schemes, but in fact, the naming and numbering of smaller units such as months and days are just as important.

In addition, the caption is incorrect on several points. It says that the Christian AD is avoided. If AD is avoided, that tells us that 5461 is in Anno Mundi and 1701 is in something else, called the civil calendar. This civil calendar isn't AD; the caption says we're avoiding that. But in fact 1701 is AD. The civil calendar of London is AD. Sure, you could use a different name for the year numbering scheme if you want, like CE. But whatever you call it, it assigns the same number to any given year.

Further, the prominent placement of the figure at the beginning of the article implies that the civil calender illustrated in the picture is the only civil calendar. But certainly it isn't; the calendar is about many of the civil calendars that exist or have existed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jc3s5h (talk • contribs) 04:08, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I looks like the clause ", avoiding the Christian AD" has been removed. This more or less fixed the problem, although in addition to the aforementioned change, we could also use "in UK civil calendar dating" to make it very clear that there isn't just one 'civil calendar dating'. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 14:46, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Gregorian calendar in Saudi Arabia
This page gives the following statement: "Countries which do not use the Gregorian calendar are ... Saudi Arabia, which uses the Islamic calendar for all purposes". This was true, but it is not so any more. From the autumn of 2016 C.E., Saudi Arabia has switched to the Gregorian calendar for many (but not all) civil purposes; see e.g. http://www.arabnews.com/node/993061/saudi-arabia and http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21711938-hauling-saudi-arabia-21st-century-saudi-arabia-adopts-gregorian, both cited by the well-known Danish calendar expert Claus Tøndering at http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/islamic.php. As far as I have been able to find, Nepal and Bhutan also do not use the Gregorian calendar at all, instead Nepal uses both the (solar) Vikrama era calendar and the (lunisolar) Newar era calendar, and Bhutan their version of the Tibetan (lunisolar) Phugpa calendar /Erik Ljungstrand (Sweden) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.241.158.201 (talk) 14:50, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * There is a subtlety here: according to this article, the payment of salaries is in fact determined by a calendar based on the tropical zodiac, which is described by Robert van Gent. The same page states that the fiscal year has been synchronised with the Gregorian since 2004, but also defined in terms of this zodiacal calendar. It seems that the coincidence of the fiscal year convinced many (both Arabic and English sources) that the Gregorian calendar would be adopted before the clarification was released. Arcorann (talk) 13:54, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

"de facto" international standard
"The most widespread civil calendar and de facto international standard is the Gregorian calendar."

ISO 8601 is the international standard for date and includes the use of Gregorian dates. Therefore "de facto" isn't strictly correct - it's an official rather than an unofficial standard.

Can I suggest a reword to:

"The most widespread civil calendar and international standard is the Gregorian calendar."

Note I've changed the link to refer to ISO 8601.

AndrewRT(Talk) 14:44, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think de facto international standard means that in practice, for any international interaction, the Gregorian calendar is what everyone uses. This was the case long before the ISO was even founded in 1947, and certainly long before the first version of the ISO 8601 standard was adopted. Furthermore, ISO 8601 is not mandated in any country I know of, and few people use it. So the "international standard" in the passage is surely not referring to ISO 8601.
 * For there to be an "official standard" there would have to be an international treaty that practically all countries have agreed to that calls for the use of the Gregorian calendar in international interactions. ISO standards are not binding treaties. It would be up to you to find such a treaty and reliable sources that describe it. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:17, 21 January 2024 (UTC)