Hidden Worldbuilding Detail in ATLA: The Avatar Calendar
SO I GOTTA TALK ABOUT THIS BECAUSE IT’S JUST TOO COOL FOR PEOPLE TO NOT KNOW ABOUT
You know when the Gaang goes to Wan Shi Tong’s library and finds out about the upcoming eclipse by using the calendar wheel? The wheel actually has a fully fleshed-out calendar system inspired by ancient East Asian ones!!
From in to out, the rings go Month -> Day -> Era Name -> Chinese Zodiac Year
So the Day of the Black Sun that the dial eventually lands on was the Yangwu Era, Year of the Monkey, the 1st day of the 8th month.
Era Names are a system that originated in ancient China, used to name and number years. So like Jianyuan Year 1, Jianyuan Year 2, and so on. It’s usually just something auspicious or ambitious sounding, like Yongtai 永泰 for “Perpetual Peace” or Daye 大业 for “Great Endeavour.” Every time an emperor declared a new era, the numbering reset. Before the Ming dynasty, emperors could declare a new era basically whenever they felt like it (causing some emperors to go WILD, changing it every few months), but starting from Ming, it was more customary for an emperor to stick with one era name for their entire reign.
Most countries that used era names have abolished them with their monarchies, including China itself, but Japan still uses them. You may have heard a while back that they changed their era name from Heisei to Reiwa with their new emperor.
Now, ATLA has its own set of era names, designed by the show’s calligraphy consultant Dr. Siu-Leung Lee. Here are loose translations of the 16 era names from the Avatar wikia, though note that some of these are VERY loose because they use very obscure characters:
The most meticulous part is that the first character in each of these has a radical that’s either Air, Water, Earth, or Fire, and they repeat in that pattern.
The era the show takes place in is 氜武 (Yangwu), with an air radical, which strongly suggests that these era names change according to Avatar. But it’s unclear if these 16 era names rotate in a cycle (which was not how era names worked) or if a new one is made up for each avatar and the wheel gets magically updated.
Regardless, it’s an amazingly detailed system that isn’t even remarked on in show, so they did all this work JUST to enrich the world for a few shots in a single episode. That’s dedication.
See my deep dive on all of season 2 for more details like this
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