Thanks, both.
Short answer: it’s complicated.
Wiki has a good article:
Julius Caesar.
No, I’m not kidding. It really is his fault. It was part of his reforms resulting in the Julian calendar.
Also, what @Northern_Piper said
If I recall, February was considered an inauspicious month for some reason or other. But I’m not an expert so don’t quote me on that.
Don’t you mean 14-fingered?
Beware the Icks of February.
I’ve always questioned this. January is named because of Janus’s two faces, looking forward and backward, so it makes no sense to add this in later as the eleventh month of the year. The only evidence I’m aware of for the ten-month calendar is people saying, “oh yeah, we used to only have ten months.” On the other hand, I can’t think of a better explanation for why July (originally) through December are named 5–10. I wonder if there weren’t just two systems in place, one with names and one with numbers.
I thought that January and February were added as the first two months of the year, preceding March and bumping it to third. (In 700 BCE, by the Roman king Numa Pompilius, says Google.)
That would account for both January looking both ways as the turn of the year and the months named/numbered later.
My proposal for keeping each day of the month falling on the same day of the week every year:
If a month starts on Sunday, that day is 1.
If a month starts on Monday, that day is 2.
If a month starts on Tuesday, that day is 3.
If a month starts on Wednesday, that day is 4.
If a month starts on Thursday, that day is 5.
If a month starts on Friday, that day is 6.
If a month starts on Saturday, that day is 7.
Days are numbered sequentially after that. Thus, for each month:
1, 8, 15, 22, 29, and 36 are always Sunday.
2, 9, 16, 23, 30, and 37 are always Monday.
3, 10, 17, 24, and 31 are always Tuesday.
4, 11, 18, 25, and 32 are always Wednesday.
5, 12, 19, 26, and 33 are always Thursday.
6, 13, 20, 27, and 34 are always Friday.
7, 14, 21, 28, and 35 are always Saturday.
Holidays need some adjustment:
New Year Holiday floats from January 1-7.
Martin Luther King Birthday fixed on Monday, January 16.
Presidents Day on fixed on Monday, February 16.
Memorial Day on fixed on Monday, May 30.
Juneteenth on fixed on Thursday, June 19.
Independence Day on either Wednesday July 4 or July 11.
Labor Day fixed on Monday, September 9.
Veterans Day fixed on Monday, November 9.
Election Day is fixed on Tuesday, November 10.
Thanksgiving Day is fixed on Thursday, November 26.
Christmas Day is fixed on Wednesday, December 25.
This year, the days would run:
January, Sunday 1 through Tuesday 31.
February, Wednesday 4 through Tuesday 31.
March, Wednesday 4 through Friday 34.
April, Saturday 7 through Sunday 36.
May, Monday 2 through Wednesday 32.
June, Thursday 5 through Friday 34.
July, Saturday 7 through Monday 37.
August, Tuesday 3 through Thursday 33.
September, Friday 6 through Saturday 25.
October, Sunday 1 through Monday 31.
November, Wednesday 4 through Thursday 33.
December, Friday 6 through Sunday 36.
A quick word of appreciation to the February explainers. I didn’t know any of that stuff but tossed the “who’s responsible” question out there just for rhetorical effect. I should have known someone would come forth with the info.
I read Mapping time : the calendar and its history : Richards, E. G. (Edward Graham) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive a very long time ago and really enjoyed it, though I’ve forgotten most of the details.
Oh no, our system of time is corrupt from the very start. It’s the 12 fingers that gave us 60-second minutes, 60-minute hours, and 24-hour days. Weeks and months came from the motion of the Moon, which of course isn’t a moon at all but the mothership of our alien overlords. Simply a coincidence that an orbit with a ~28-day period also happens to be the ideal orbital height for instituting a global anal probe program.
The Babylonians were a minor trading race from Ophiuchus, the 13th Sign of the Zodiac | OpenMind. They were helpful for a moment in their time and space but despite honoring the larger federation with their 13 zodiacal signs, they fell out of favor, their work systematically denigrated in favor of solar-based systems, and conveniently eliminated from the zodiac.
The true alien overlords were obsessed with the number seven. Note that there were 7 Wonders of the World, including the destroyed-without-a-trace Babylonian Hanging Gardens. Many German selenophrenologists in the 19th century tried to put forth the case that these aliens had three-and-a-half fingers on each pseudopod, but this was conclusively disproven by the beginning of the 20th century. Danish chemist Søren Peder Lauritz Sørensen at the Carlsberg Laboratory formalized this knowledge in 1909 when he put 7 as the neutral, i.e. peace, point in the pH scale. Indeed, Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points for peace was totally based upon the fact that the aliens could point in fourteen ways at once, not favoring any individual one.
It was the failure of the rest of us humans to accept this peace plan for the world that led to the aliens - mostly - leaving and the unending chaos of the succeeding century.
I’m an accountant. You’ll often see me answering tax-related questions from a professional’s perspective.
The issue that forced this suggestion was that someone’s Worker’s Comp audit ran such that there were 53 weeks in the audit period. Sure, every once in a while there have to 53 weeks in year-long periods that run a particular date to another particular date one year later, but I thought it would work much better if the entire calendar had an extra week instead at the same interval. That way the insurance company would know that the audit period was probably going to have slightly bigger numbers than years without the extra week.
Related topic tangent unrelated to this thread: I’m also concerned about that week being counted twice, because the WC audit periods for some reason have the starting date and the ending date exactly one year apart, for 366 days in the audit period, and so given that the audit period ended on a payday and from all indications the next audit period will start on the same day, thus counting that payroll twice, and thus costing them extra for WC. I asked the insurance representative if we should be counting that payroll that was on the last day of the audit period or not, because there was an indication that the audit period actually started at like 12:02am instead of at midnight, which would explain the overlap of days. But that doesn’t tell me whether I should count the last payroll in the audit period or not.
It does seem to be murky, with little clear evidence for a former 10 month calendar. But the names of the months certainly suggest 10 months.
That book you linked to looks interesting. I think I’ll check it out.
Yes, it’s time for base ten time, or metric time. 100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes per hour and 20 hours per day, 10 morning, 10 evening.
And if we don’t convert, à la lanterne!
My employer used to pay twice a month. Very convenient. Then, for some reason known only to the suits they decided to go to every two weeks. This is crazy. Some years will have 27 pay periods so they have lowered out annual salary (or, in my case, pension) by a tiny amount to compensate. Of course they started do it so as to make it as long as possible before the 27 pay year came. Anyway, I like the scheme.
My understanding is that the year used to start in March, hence the names September,…,December. And Julius Caeser stole a day from the last month to add to Quintember and make it a 31 day month renamed July and then Augustus did the same to Sextember.
Incidentally, the French word for leap year is anneé bisextile. Not sure why, but my wife’s gay colleague used to say it was his year.
Was his name Leap?
Is your contracted pay for a two-week period or on a monthly basis?
Same here. I think the solution is 12 months of thirty days each, with each month having 3 10 day weeks. The weekends would be 4 days long. The end of the year would be 5 or 6 extra days that are a great worldwide end of the year celebration.
No! 10 months of 36 days, each composed of six six-day weeks. I suppose we can drop Wednesday. The end of the year festival would be five days, or a full week in leap years. The only reason for the 30-day month is to roughly coincide with the cycle of the moon’s phases, but since there’s basically no way to make that work, leave it aside.
That would bring September–December back into alignment with their names. We can call the festival intercalary period January; nobody is going to miss February. I’m fully in favour of the four-day workweek, so we can still have two-day weekends.