Strange question for any of you.After a car chase in one of our adventures(where it turned out nobody could actualy drive!!)one of the players said we where all sunday drivers.Another player said,"or whatever sunday is called in this time?" Which leads me to ask has anyone read or made up names of the day for the imperial era?I cant see them using the present names as arent they from modern(if you can use that word for ancient)era reasons.

Remember where the Imperium stems from... unless something major had happened to put everyone off the current system then the 'Terran' day names would be the Imperial 'standard'. The Catholic Church and the (original) Inquisition could put up with 'Wodensday' and 'Thorsday' so it stands of good chance of being acceped in the year 40,000. Given some of the conspiracy theories around the orgins of the Emperor such 'pagan' names may even have been strongly in favour!

That said I fully expect that every planet, especially those returned to he fold, to have developed their own local calendars. Some as despotic as decreeing 'no weekends', and pleasure worlds with 'mid-week' breaks. They couldn't keep the Terran calendar unless their sidereal year fitted that of Terra exactly. Probably the closer the length of a year to the length of a Terran year, the stronger the link in naming(?)

Probably the best answer to the question 'What day is it?" is 'What planet are we on?'

Most big Imperial institutions probably use the Terran standard calender as their official method of time keeping, and clocks set up around the office so they can keep the records straight, while using the local variant (if any) during actual day-to-day operation.

Some worlds might have a 10 day week, while others might have days that are only 20 hours long (or both!).

I think imperial worlds have their own calendars and just translate (approximately) their current date in terran format for the official documents: I can see this could be the meaning of the first number in the seven digits timestring preceding the millennium's indication.

So, to give that decaying touch, I think it makes sense figuring that on a distant hive world (by what you say I guess you're adventuring in a hive) days are simply named "Day one", "Day two", "Day three" and so on, maybe on a weekly or (likely) tenday base: there are no fixed days of rest but, say, every tenday a worker gets two or three days off he can spend when it best suits him or - even better - his employer.

So, I can't see a "Day ten driver" replacing your "Sunday driver" but perhaps a "XYZ driver" would do, where XYZ* is a world known sectorwide for the poor driving skills of its citizens.

* I think that using the name of an existing car producer to name that planet would add a nice touch your players would surely enjoy.

I seem to recall some in depth fluff in one of the TT books regarding how time is kept in the Imperium. I'd have to go dig around for a while to find it again before I could properly answer how it worked, though. IIRC, the Imperium has a "standard time" system, presumably based on the Julian calendar originally, but it's broken down into a numerical format so I don't think any days have specific names anymore (at least as far as the Administratum is concerned.)

Like someone else said, each planet would probably have its own calendar to match its own orbital year, with whatever nomenclature the locals cared to use. Any offical Imperial documentation would just use the numerical date-stamp based on standard Terran time, though.

That said, I could also see expressions like "Sunday driver" lasting far beyond the origin of the term, so it's possible that your players would understand that term to mean "someone who drives too slowly" without realizing that "Sunday" was actually one of seven names given to sequential days in the ancient past some 40,000-odd years ago.

There are lots of expressions in modern day society that have fairly curious origins if you take the time to research where they came from. I'm sure there would be similar expressions in the 41st millennium, regardless of contemporary accuracy.

Edit: For more detailed info on the official time keeping system, check out the links at the end of this thread from the RT forum.

First class, to the bitter end, above board, by and large, a clean sweep... all naval expressions from the 18th and 19th century that we still use today, with little thought to their actual meaning.

Thanks for the replies all.I didnt realise that the imperial calender was explained on a site,although i find it confusing i can see how they have gone to a numerical system to try and cover it all.As you all say it would make sense to have each planet having its own calender to reflect its sunlight/season etc.Tenday driver sounds good to me or as another post said,"drives like a (insert planet known for doing things slowly) bargeman!" etc. We were adventuring on an imperial planet with 1950ish american highways berengario.GM had us and adversaries cause a huge pile up do to cack driving.Much dodging of enforcers afterwards!!!