Year 1 "of the Great Crisis" (i.e. the French Revolution) was equivalent to 1789 in the standard Gregorian system.
The months were named, in chronological historical order, for great figures in Western European history in the fields of science, religion, philosophy, industry and literature.
In all, the Positivist Calendar "contains the names of 558 great men of all periods, classified according to their field of activity.
He called it, "a provisional institution, destined for the present exceptional century to serve as an introduction to the abstract worship of Humanity.
The main reason that his suggestion [for calendar reform] failed to find favor with many people seems to have been that he insisted on naming the months for various notable persons from historical to modern times, ... One must admit that it would seem strange to give the date as the third day of Homer, and with a month named for the bard a reference to "Shakespeare's Twelfth Night" would be ambiguous.
[6] Birthdays, significant anniversaries, and other holidays would need to be recalculated as a result of a calendar reform, and would always be on the same day of the week.