IIRC Ghav's a classics man and I think Danny had previously displayed some knowledge of Koine, all I know of it is mostly the numerical prefixes used for science and math, even some of the decidedly obscure ones, but that still amounts to little.
I'm trying to come up with a term that can roughly be taken to mean a period of fifty years. This term has to be based on ancient Greek, but it doesn't have to be an exact translation. The term can be twisted about and bastardized a little, as long as the root meaning could be worked out.
I've come up with a couple possibilities working on my own and using Google, but ancient Greek translations are not straightforward things on the Internet, and I know very little compared to some of the knowledgeable people here.
So far I have Pentechron and Pentekost as options. For example, a person living in the year 159 could say that they were living in the ninth year of the Fourth Pentechron (the fourth period of 50 years). Would one or either of these terms work, given what I've outlined above?
Well Pentecost is 50, I think literally, and Etoyc is year, so Pentecostetoyc maybe? Abbreivated as PE or PCE or PL, I think L was shorthand for year.
Well if you're not welded to Greek the options expand a lot. Obviously you could use semi-centennial but that implies centennial is the preferred. If its for fiction I'd have fun with it, I know Warhammer 40K likes to date everything as M40.987 or M40.988 etc. Keeps it intuitively obvious to the reader but never bypasses the chance to remind them its the distant future.
For Latin your option are better, because while millennium is 1000 years and century 100, you've also got Quinquagenary for a 50 year mark or options for things like a lustrum, plural lustra, for 5-year periods, which has nothing to do with the number 5, so you could get away, again if it was fiction, by having the word be related to the event rather than the number. Like if it was a comet that popped in every fifty years naming it that. Or if was some standardized time marking that got in place after 5 monarchs from a dynasty had reigned about fifty years each, the 'Quin Dynasty' say, having a 50 year period be a Quin, and its a funny little easter egg for the audience.
That's my two cents anyway.
- Albert Einstein
King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod
