Diversary: An Explanation
Anniversaries are all very well, the achievement of a certain number of full orbits around the Sun on the back of the Earth. But what if days are more important, should there be celebrations held at the 100th day of a life, or the 10,000th day? Of course there should, there should be celebrations every day.
I’ve pondered what a day-anniversary would be called, obviously the anni- part is totally incorrect. So, I looked at the etymology of the word anniversary. http://www.m-w.com/ seem to be the most forthcoming about etymologies of the online dictionaries, and found that annus (year), should become dies (day). So it could be dieversary or diversary, the latter maybe getting confused with a version of ‘diverse’. I did more research and found that there was a hypothetical paragraph containing the word ‘diversary’ from 1996, used in the correct context:
…Anne and Belinda are on holiday together on the island of Alvbe [Ars Longa Vita Brevis Est], where it is the custom to celebrate diversaries [rather than anniversaries] of everything - and particularly of one’s birth.
- From New Scientist, 1996
Yet again I’ve discovered something which already exists, at least in a hypothetical article. The first occasion I remember rediscovering something was during my GCSEs when I invented the circular periodic table, which apparently already existed.
Special Diversaries
Then begs the question: what diversaries or even anniversaries should we celebrate? We live in decimalised times, so 10th and multiples of which make sense, we do after all have ten fingers which is the basis of this system. But there are other numbers which are important to humans, besides decimals like pi and phi, like:
- 7 which history has dictated to be the acceptable length of a week and is a divisor of…
- 28, the approximate duration in days of a lunar cycle;
- 5 or 20 can be appropriated to the amount of digits we have, the pentadactyl limb being fundamental to much life on this planet;
- 24 hours in the day is very important, and has even effected the names of the days (esp. in Latin languages);
- the first numeric system in Sumeria used base-60.
I’ve come to the conclusion that using multiples of 10 be the easiest solution. The brilliance of celebrating 10x diversaries, means they are further apart than anniversaries, hence more special. Also, the come at different times of the year - you won’t always be stuck celebrating your diversary in the winter! The main drawback is they are slightly harder to calculate, but a simple formula in Excel will put you on the right path (i.e. if A1 contains your date of birth =A1+10000 will display the date of your 10000th diversary).
What next
I hypothesised this several months ago, before my 8000th diversary. I was disappointed when I forgot about it, realising on my friend’s 8000th-diversary. I was very jealous. I will anticipate the next one though - my 9000th won’t pass me by.