Hello again!
Ladies and gentlemen, get a bucket and a mop for this w...inding and manoeuvring collection of text! This one is about our months/calendar.
If you think about it, our month names are not so strange in comparison to the rest of Europe, but they are weird in the sense that they are not very 'Anglish' sounding. In fact, the month names that we use are not English at all, and they even extend beyond Europe. For example, even in Arabic, month names are similar. If you look at the geological extent of the countries that use similar month names, something starts to make sense though: the users are those countries that were (at some time) under the influence of the Roman empire, or those that were in some way related.
In particular, the core states of the previous Roman empire all use their own nationalised versions of month names that bear a very strong resemblance to ours. Even some states that were not under their control or influence also adopted them, for example; Norway, Denmark, Sweden, etc. My guess for the reason why is that they were influenced by Britannia and modern-day Belgium via sea-trade.
So, working our way up again; our month names are not Celtic. After the Celts, there were the Romans, and our month names are of this origin.
This raises an interesting issue though; the Anglo-Saxons who subsequently came over to settle in Britannia after the Romans left - these guys generally weren't very accepting of Romanisation. Wherever possible, it seems that they would use their own language (of course) and press their own culture. Where there was a 'good Roman idea', they would often copy/replace the concept but put their own spin on it (for example the day names). Anyway, after the Romans left, the people of Britannia predominantly started to speak more and more Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin (or Celtic), and ultimately, this is why we speak a Germanic-based language today rather than a Latin-based one.
The Anglo-Saxons did bring their month names and calendar over and presumbly develop them while they were here too. They had their own. Their month names were:
Æftera-Geol-monaþ: After-yule-month
Solmonaþ: Sunmonth
Hreðmonaþ: Hrethmonth (Not sure what that means)
Eosturmonaþ: Eastermonth
Ðrimilcemonaþ: Threemilkingsmonth
Ærra-Liða-monaþ: Before-travelling-month
Æftera-Liða-monaþ: After-travelling-month
Weodmonaþ: Weedmonth
Haligmonaþ: Holymonth
Winterfylleð: Winter-something? Winter-filleth? (University of Oxford doesn't understand this either)
Blotmonaþ: Bloodmonth
Ærra-Geol-monaþ: Before-yule-month
I was originally going to explain these more but I don't want to make the thread massive. However, consider it from the point of view of agricultural people and you'll get the idea.
So, if the Anglo-Saxons had their calendar, and these month names, and the attitude that they wanted to oppose Romanisation, why do we have a Latin calendar and not an Anglo-Saxon one today?
So, as I explained in the last thread, the Anglo-Saxons were obsessed with the Moon. They had a Lunar calendar. Their calendar was based on the phases or cycles of the Moon. The problem with the Lunar calendar is that the timing of 12 Lunar cycles does not match up with how long it takes for the Earth to orbit the Sun. What this meant is that the seasons would shift away from their calendar. In other words, there were less than 365.25 days in their 12 Lunar cycle calendar! To get around this, they added an extra month (a leap month) every 2 years to try to realign it. But this wasn't a very elegant solution. You've got a year of 12 months, then a year of 13 months the year after. Over those 2 years, the middle point was 'off season' by around 15 days, and even after adding the leap month within 2 years, the calendar was still out by around 6 days over that period! The leap month would be added into the middle of the year, and all in all, the whole system was a pain in the arse to deal with.
The Romans, however, had already worked this out, and they had a solar-tweaked, Moon-inspired calendar. The Roman calendar was basically a version of a Lunar calendar that had been chopped up and forced to fit the timing of the Earth's orbit around the Sun (apart from a quarter of a day). You could also use this tweaked calendar to trade and collaborate with other ex-Roman states. Without unifying, the calendars would overlap, and just wouldn't make any sense. Remember that every two years, Summer would be 2 months long. It's probably for these two reasons why the Anglo-Saxons adopted this new Latin calendar, and henceforth, why we use it's basis today.
Anyway, so instead, we have the boring Latin months:
January: Janus (a Roman god)
February: Februa (a Roman god)
March: Mars (a Roman god) (This is the old Roman first month!)
April: Not sure but it makes sense that it would be named after a god - Aphrodite?
May: Maja (a Roman goddess)
June: Juno (a Roman goddess)
July: (Would have been Quintember - Fifth month) Renamed after Julius Caesar.
August: (Would have been Sextember - Sixth month) Renamed after Augustus Caesar.
September: Seventh month - as in Septagon - shape with seven sides.
October: Eighth month - as in Octagon - shape with eight sides.
November: Nineth month - as in Nonagon - shape with nine sides.
December: Tenth month - as in Decagon - shape with ten sides, Decimal, having 10 units, etc.
There's a bit more info for you all.
Enjoy and have a good night! |
I could be wrong though.
