HOW DID THE ENGLISH MONTHS GET THEIR NAMES ?

HOW DID THE ENGLISH MONTHS GET THEIR NAMES ?

A lot of the names come from the Roman times, the Roman Empire, the Emperors, Roman mythology,

gods  and goddesses, that kind of thing, as well as a few Latin words.

So, let`s have a look.

We begin with January and the God of Janus , the god of doors…

If you see a statue or a picture of Janus, you see two faces looking in two different directions,

usually left and right. The god who looks both ways back to the past and forward to the future,

And also with doors, of course, you either go in through the door or out through the door, so

It`s about two directions, a place of transition.

So that`s January, coming from Janus.

February, this is may be not so clear where the name comes from, but people think it comes from

The Latin word “februare” which means to purify, because at that time of the year in the Roman Empire

there was a festival  of Forgiveness where people were forgiven for things that they had done.

So it was a time of purification period. It may be that February comes from that “februare”.

Then we have March, which is named after the god of war, Mars. At one time for a long period March was the first month in the Roman calendar. It was counted from here and then presumably January

and February came at the end. So, Mars, March was the first month of the year in the Roman Empire

calendar. But that changed in the 16th century, when Pope Gregory brought in his Gregorian Calendar

and made January the first month of the year officially, that explains  a little bit what we will be

coming to at the end of the list where these numbers don`t make sense but we`ll come to that.

April, Aprilis in the Latin name , and it could come, people think from the Latin word to open:

“apperire”, and if you think of flowers in the spring opening, it`s that kind of idea after the winter,

flowers start to appear so it`s a springtime kind of word.

May is named after Maia, after  the Roman goddess who was the mother of Mercury.

June named after Juno, another goddess who was the wife of Jupiter.

July is named after the famous emperor, Julius Caesar who was born in that month when it

was called Quintilis, which is the Latin word for fifth, which explains if you start with March as

one. One, two, three, four, five, July was the 5th month of that time.

But they renamed it anyway after Julius Caesar and it`s called July.

And similarly, with August, that used to be called the 6th month, Latin, Sextilis, but it was changed and named after Augustus Caesar in the 8th century BC. So, August comes from the emperor Augustus.

And then the last four are just based on the numbers and this is why it seems strange that September

nowadays is not the 7th month at all, it`s the ninth  month, but at that time when they were counting

from March, it was the 7th month. That`s why it`s so confusing. So: “septem” Latin for 7th, September.

October, “octo”, Latin for 8th. November,  “novem”, Latin for 9th. December, “decem”, Latin for 10th,

So, that explains why these months don`t have the right number connection at all. That explains the mystery. And it explains also how we have this influence from so many hundreds of years from the

Roman Empire and we`ve never really replaced that system. It would be too difficult, probably, to

try to change the names  now, so we still have those names from hundreds of years ago.