National Alan Day

Most modern reference works send Alan back to the Alans, a nomadic Iranian people who migrated into Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries. The sourced summary of that position goes as far as saying no other explanation has won any measure of acceptance among scholars.

The same article then records an objection aimed at the Breton form. The Alans' own name carried a long vowel in its second syllable. Run through Breton sound change, that vowel should have produced a modern Breton e, and the attested spelling keeps an a.

The name is medieval. The observance is not, and its own record is thin to the point of transparency. No founder, proclamation, or registration document for the day has been located, and a search of the Federal Register returns nothing for either phrase.

The earliest surviving capture of any third-party listing for the day was taken in June 2023. That is a floor on when it was circulating, not a date of creation. A different observance sharing the same November date, on the same listing site, is archived from nine years earlier.

One account does circulate, offered as speculation rather than fact: that the day remembers the Canadian lattice theorist Alan Day. His biography records a birth on 9 October 1941 and a death on 26 November 1990. Neither date is the 28th.