When your story is centered around some important day or special length of time, why not name your story after it?
This is a Sub-Trope of Event Title because events take time. This is also basically the time variant of The Place, but for times instead of locations. Overlaps highly with "Number of Objects" Title when there's a number of a time interval stated. And its Super-Trope, Title by Number because time deals with numbers.
Chapter titles have a higher than average chance for this because then it marks the time that the chapter takes place.
Sub-Trope-s:
- Age of Titles: Because an age is a vague length of time.
- Running Time in the Title
- Title by Year: A year is mentioned in the title.
- Annual Title: The year of publication is mentioned in the title.
Examples
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Comic Books
Fanfic
- Dead of Night: Due to involving The Undead that are paranormal detectives that work at night.
- Split Second (My Little Pony): Twilight Sparkle broke time when she got her cutie mark.
- To Hell and Back (Arrowverse): Chapter 16, the Christmas Episode, is titled "Beebo Day", a.k.a alternate Christmas.
Film — Animated
Film — Live-Action
- One Hour Photo: A film developer, meaning the job that uses blackrooms, takes a creepy fascination with a regular customer's family.
- 2:37: It shows the events of a single school day from the perspectives of six troubled students, leading up to a suicide at 2:37 p.m.
- Three Days of the Condor: A political thriller about a CIA bookworm marked for murder by his superiors because He Knows Too Much.
- 6 Days: About a six-day-long hostage taking.
- Six Days, Seven Nights: A 1998 survival adventure with a romantic subplot between a Lovable Rogue aviator and a Defrosting Ice Queen fashion model that takes place over what was intended as a weeklong vacation in Makatea.
- The 6th Day: The title comes from:
"God created man in His own image. And behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."
- Nine Months: The approximate length of a pregnancy and a pregnancy is the Inciting Incident of the movie.
- The 9½ Weeks series:
- The first movie, 9½ Weeks: The duration of the romantic relationship between the protagonists John Gray and Elizabeth McGraw.
- Direct-to-video first sequel Another 9½ Weeks, a.k.a Love in Paris.
- Die Hard 2 does this in a roundabout way: the film is adapted from a book called 93 Minutes, referring to the amount of time the protagonist has to save the day before his wife's plane crashes. The film itself is about 90 minutes long.
- Direct-to-video second sequel The First 9½ Weeks.
- 11:14: About two car crashes at the titular time.
- 12:01 PM: Its "Groundhog Day" Loop starts at the titular time.
- 13 Minutes (2021): Refers to "the short time frame residents have to seek shelter" before a tornado strikes a particular location; the disaster film centers around four families affected by a devastating tornado.
- 15 Minutes, referring to Andy Warhol's quote about 15 Minutes of Fame. Two people plan to become celebrities by committing a televised celebrity murder and then pleading insanity.
- 28 Days: The length of the rehabilitation program the main character goes to.
- The 28 [Time] Later series:
- 28 Days Later: The main story starts twenty-eight days after the prologue.
- 28 Weeks Later: The story begins twenty-eight weeks after the events of the first film.
- Split Second (1992)
Films Adapted from Literature
- Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo: The Film of the Book of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo about the thirty or so seconds of time that B-25 bombers had, to bomb Tokyo in World War II.
- 48 Hrs. series of Walter Hill action films:
- 48 Hrs.: The protagonists must track down escaped convict Albert Ganz (James Remar) within 48 hours.
- Another Forty Eight Hrs
- 88 Minutes: The protagonist is informed he only has that long to live, although, the running time is 70 Minutes.
- 127 Hours, indicating the length of time Aron Ralston was trapped in a canyon with his hand lodged under a boulder.
- 365 Days, a.k.a a year, which refers to the amount of time Massimo intends to keep Laura to give her a chance to fall in love with him.
- (500) Days of Summer: The film takes a look at Tom and Summer's quasi-relationship from Tom's perspective, numbering the days and events that lead to its buildup and eventual downfall.
- Film adaptations of the book, Around the World in Eighty Days:
- Dead of Night: Since the bulk of the movie takes place in a dream at night.
- Gone In 60 Seconds: A movie and its remake:
- Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
- Gone in 60 Seconds (2000): A renowned car thief gets pulled out of retirement to rescue his kid brother from the clutches of a deranged crime lord. The protagonist and his cohorts are skilled professionals, able to "boost" any car in 60 seconds or less. Kiss your ride goodbye.
- Last Night in Soho: Subverted as the title has no direct meaning to the story. It's actually not set during a night in Soho, but named after a song.
Literature
- 11/22/63: The date of John F. Kennedy's assassination (in the American MM/DD/YY format), which the novel is partially about.
- Nineteen Minutes: The length of time the Inciting Incident of a school shooting takes to happen.
- Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo: An account by Captain Ted Lawson of the Doolittle bombing raid on Imperial Japan during World War II. The B-25 bombers were launched from the USS Hornet and had about thirty seconds of time over Tokyo to drop their bombs.
- The title of 365 Days refers to the number of days Massimo intends to hold Laura captive in the hopes of making her love him. The first novel itself takes place over around three to four months, though; given that the ending of The Next 365 Days depicts Laura's 30th birthday (she was kidnapped by Massimo on her 29th birthday), the entire trilogy takes place over around a year.
- The Animorphs book, In the Time of Dinosaurs.
- Arabian Nights: Also known as The Tales of One Thousand and One Nights (Farsi Hezār-o yek šab, Arabic Kitāb 'alf layla wa-layla), based on the framing device in which Scheherazade delays her husband's planned execution of her by reciting stories over the course of 1001 nights.
- Around the World in Eighty Days
- Cutler Series: Its books have Temporal Theme Naming-type Idiosyncratic Episode Naming, but while it looks like this, it's not: Dawn, is actually a Protagonist Title, Secrets of the Morning, Twilight's Child, Midnight Whispers, Darkest Hour.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid Dog Days: Dog Days is a term used for Summer, which is the time period the book is set in.
- Dead of Night: Because monsters are a threat at night and it's a horror-y title fitting the story's themes.
- The Magic Treehouse: The American titles for the books in the series, Idiosyncratic Episode Naming. For example:
- "Dinosaurs Before Dark"
- "The Knight at Dawn"
- "Mummies in the Morning"
- "Pirates Past Noon"
- Something Like... Series: The first four books have titles themed around the four seasons, and the last uses "Forever".
- There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: The Hidden Hour is referenced in the chapter title of "Witching Hour"
, where Devina explores her evolution into a Witch Doctor.
Live-Action Television
- 7 Days (1998): An elite NSA agent can travel back in time by seven days to correct history that's Gone Horribly Wrong.
- 20 Minutes: Referencing this line:
I know something crucial you don't: no matter how many years you've set your life right, it takes but 20 minutes to take it all away.
- 37 Days: The series covers the weeks between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 18 June 1914 to the British declaration of war on Germany on 4 August that year.
- 49 Days revolves around Jihyun who enters a coma due to a car accident. She's given a second chance to live on one condition: she must borrow the body of another woman and have 3 people cry genuine tears for her within 49 days.
- Designated Survivor: 60 Days is about the Minister of Environment Park Mujin who has to sit as Acting President for 60 days after a devastating attack on the National Assembly.
- Happy Days: The show started out as a nostalgic look at 1950s America.
- Island of the Sea Wolves: Each episode is titled after the season it takes place in: "Spring", "Summer", and "Fall".
- Minute to Win It: A contestant tries to complete 10 tasks of increasing difficulty involving various household items. Each task has a time limit of 60 seconds.
- Split Second (1972): A Game Show whose gimmick is that all three contestants may answer questions based on their reaction times.
- Queen for Seven Days
Music
- Kpop group Four Minute. Their name has two meanings: that the members will attract fans in 4 minutes (which is why their songs are always less than 4 minutes), and that they'll do their best for every minute. They have an album called 4Minutes Left.
- Alternative Hip Hop group Arrested Development's debut album, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of..., is named after the amount of time it took for the band to secure a recording contract.
- David Bowie had an affinity for this trope, and as such, it shows up a lot throughout his output:
- "Love You till Tuesday" off of Bowie's debut album details a man whose sense of love is so fleeting that he can only be attracted to a partner for two days at a time ("My burning desire started on Sunday/Give me your heart and I'll love you till Tuesday").
- "Five Years", the opener to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, is named after how much time Earth has left to live in the album's story.
- The sequel to Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, features a song literally called "Time" about how suffocating the inevitable passage of years is.
- "Golden Years" is named after the period of time in which a person's life was at its most productive and fulfilling, typically their youth, tying in with the ironic lyrics about living life through a Nostalgia Filter.
- Never Let Me Down has two instances. "Day-In Day-Out", the opener, uses its title to invoke feelings of ennui and ironically juxtapose them against a portrait of a woman living in poverty. The track right after it is "Time Will Crawl", whose title refers to the approaching death of humanity after a nuclear disaster (having been inspired by Chernobyl).
- "Seven Years in Tibet" is named as such after the 1957 novel of the same name, tying in with its lyrics about the killing of a Tibetan monk; incidentally, the song released 40 years after the book did.
- "Thursday's Child" derives its name from both a line in the nursery rhyme "Monday's Child" and a line in The Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" (itself a reference to the nursery rhyme), tying in with the lyrics looking back on Bowie's life up to 1999.
- The Next Day and its Title Track take their names from Holy Saturday, the day between Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, invoking it as a metaphor for Bowie's prolonged hiatus after an on-stage heart attack in 2004 and his feelings looking back on it.
- ★ features two instances. "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" takes its subtitle refers to the period in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore in which siblings Giovanni and Annabella have an affair with one another, being Bowie's adaptation of the play. Meanwhile, "Dollar Days", the penultimate track on the album, is named after a term for days when stores sell items at very low prices.
- Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y." is named after the International Geophysical Year, a global science project spanning from mid-1957 to the end of 1958 in which researchers on both sides of the Iron Curtain collaborated on various scientific efforts across eleven different fields. The symbolism of the year and the innovations that it led to (most notably the Sputnik 1 satellite launch by the Soviet Union) are both reflected in the song's optimistic and intentionally Zeerusty lyrics.
- David Guetta's "Just for One Day (Heroes)", which David Bowie provided guest vocals on, takes its name from a line in the Title Track of Bowie's 1977 album "Heroes".
- Iggy Pop's "Tonight" (off of Lust for Life) is named after the final night between the narrator and his girlfriend, as he comforts her during her gradual death of a drug overdose.
- The carol "The 12 Days of Christmas" is named after the length of time it spans: twelve consecutive days (even though Christmas itself lasts only one).
Theatre
- Anne of the Thousand Days: a 1948 play centering on the period when Henry VIII divorced his wife, Catherine of Aragon, to pursue his mistress, Anne Boleyn. Anne lasted just about one thousand days from that point: because she failed to birth a male heir, she was tried for adultery in a Kangaroo Court, and sentenced to beheading. This work was made into a film in 1969, starring Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold.
Video Games
- Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: The protagonists have 9 hours to survive their situation.
- 60 Seconds!: About the amount of time the player has in the preparation phase.
- 80 Days: An Around the World in Eighty Days adaptation.
- Ninety-Nine Nights
- Half-Minute Hero: The titular protagonist dies after that amount of time.
- Minit: Creative spelling of "minute", because you die after 60 seconds.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, referring to the amount of time the titular door can remain sealed.
- Split/Second (2010)
- Until Dawn: The characters have to survive until dawn for them to be rescued.
Webcomics
- This Croc Will Die In 100 Days: A comic that counts down from 100 days, where the croc does die.
Western Animation
