Our lives run on Roman time. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and public holidays are regulated by Pope Gregory XIII's Gregorian Calendar, which is itself a modification of Julius Caesar's calendar introduced in 45 B.C. The names of our months are therefore derived from the Roman gods, leaders, festivals, and numbers.
Some of their etymologies are well-established: January and March honor the gods Janus and Mars; July and August honor Julius Caesar and his successor, the emperor Augustus; and the months Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December are archaic adjectives formed from the ordinal numbers from 5 to 10 ...
In 45 B.C., Julius Caesar ordered a calendar consisting of twelve months based on a solar year. This calendar employed a cycle of three years of 365 days, followed by a year of 366 days (leap year). When first implemented, the "Julian Calendar" also moved the beginning of the year from March 1 to January 1.
September (from Latin septem, "seven") or mensis September was originally the seventh of ten months on the ancient Roman calendar that began with March (mensis Martius, "Mars' month").
June is named after the Roman goddess Juno – the god of marriage and childbirth, and the wife of Jupiter, king of the gods. Here she is seated in a chariot. Giulio Bonasone (1500/10–1574), The Triumph of Juno from the series Loves, Rages and Jealousies of Juno. Engraving, 1531–1576.
In the ancient Roman calendar, October was the name of the eighth month of the year. Its name comes from octo, the Latin word for “eight.” When the Romans converted to a 12-month calendar, they tried to rename this month after various Roman emperors, but October's name stuck!
The name of March comes from Martius, the first month of the earliest Roman calendar. It was named after Mars, the Roman god of war, and an ancestor of the Roman people through his sons Romulus and Remus.
May (in Latin, Maius) was named for the Greek goddess Maia, who was identified with the Roman era goddess of fertility, Bona Dea, whose festival was held in May.
February is named after a Roman purification festival called februa, which occurred around the fifteenth of this month. Februa literally means “month of cleansing” – a fitting title considering that February was once the last month of the year.
December's name derives from the Latin word decem (meaning 10) because it was originally the 10th month of the year in the calendar of Romulus c. 750 BC, which began in March. The winter days following December were not included as part of any month.
The “Gregorian Calendar” skipped 10 days in October of 1582 in order to make up for the extra days which had been accrued under the Julian calendar, and established a more accurate accounting for leap years to avoid the accrual of extra days in the future.
The Julian calendar is the one that was introduced in the year 46 BC by Julius Caesar to all of the Roman Empire, and it is the calendar that was used during the life of Jesus Christ and at the time of the early Church.
People in Britain going to bed on September 2 1752 woke up the next day on September 14. It happened because the country switched from an old dating system, the Julian calendar, to a new one, the Gregorian calendar. This brought Britain in line with most of Europe.
November, 11th month of the Gregorian calendar. Its name is derived from novem, Latin for “nine,” an indication of its position in the early Roman calendar.
Monday is called "Monday" because it's the "moon's day", a name derived from Old English (Mōnandæg) and Germanic languages, which itself comes from the Latin dies Lunae ("day of the Moon") and reflects ancient Babylonian and Roman traditions of naming days after celestial bodies. This tradition links the day to the Moon, often personified as a goddess (Luna in Latin, Mani in Norse mythology).
It was named by the Roman Senate in honour of Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., being the month of his birth. Before then it was called Quintilis, being the fifth month of the calendar that started with March.
Unsurprisingly, February 29 th is the least common birthday. Because Leap Day only rolls around every four years, there's only a 1/1,461 chance of being born on this day (versus 1/365 for any other given day).
The word "February" comes from Old French, which was spelled "fevrair." The French version didn't include that first "r." Additionally, while English did borrow the term from Latin—where it was spelled "Februarius" with that initial "r"—over time, speech has shaped how we pronounce it.
January (in Latin, Ianuarius) is named after Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions in ancient Roman religion and mythology.
May is an English feminine given name. It is derived from the name of the month, which comes from Maia, the name of a Roman fertility goddess. The name May is also used as a pet form of Mary and Margaret.
The months September, October and December are the 9th, 10th and 12th months of the year respectively. But sept, oct and dec are the roman words for 7, 8 and 10 respectively. Why do these names correspond to these positions? They're hangovers from the Julian calendar, in which they were the 7th to 10th months.
The resulting calendar year, the longest calendar year in recorded history, lasted 445 days — nearly 80 days longer than the sidereal year (the orbit of Earth around the Sun) — and was nicknamed the annus confusionis ("Year of Confusion").
Students of Roman history and of Shakespeare know March 15 as the “Ides” (or middle) of March – the day in 44 BCE when Brutus, Cassius and several senators assassinated Julius Caesar. As he lay dying, Caesar recalled the soothsayer's earlier warning: “Beware the Ides of March.”
We celebrate New Year's on January 1st primarily due to ancient Roman traditions, honoring Janus, the god of beginnings, and aligning with the start of the Roman consular year, a date later solidified by Julius Caesar's Julian calendar and reaffirmed by Pope Gregory XIII's Gregorian calendar in 1582, eventually becoming a global standard.
March is a gender-neutral name from a couple of sources. As an English name, it points to the third month of the year when spring has sprung and the days begin to feel brighter again!