It’s my (limited) understanding that January and February were never really considered the last two months of the year, at least not in the usual sense. As bump said, the period between December and March wasn’t originally considered a month or months by the Romans. December was their tenth and last month, March was the first month, and the time between didn’t have a special name. It was just winter. AFAIK January became the new first month at around the same time it got the name “January”.
I see that according to Wikipedia “Although March was originally the first month in the old Roman Calendar, January became the first month of the calendar year under either Numa [around 713 BC] or the Decemvirs about 450 BC (Roman writers differ).”
Recalled to mind, is an article that I read long ago by a British humorist, the late Paul Jennings. He suggested there, a quite simple and elegant change to the calendar which would bring us a good way back into line with the Romans, and afford other benefits.
His idea was, to rename January and February Undecimber and Duodecimber; and for the beginning of March to become the New Year. This would make September to December, truly the seventh-to-tenth months. It would also mitigate the current rather unsatisfactory situation by which after the Christmas and New Year festivities, we endure the anti-climactic couple of dreary, wintry months until spring and the stirrings of new life in March. Under Jennings’s plan, Christmas would be celebrated on Duodecimber 25th, and March 1st would be New Year’s Day.
He mentioned that the only downside he saw, was the suspicion that the Inland Revenue (the authority in the UK which collects and administers taxes), would, “by that mysterious mathematics which only they understand”, use the new set-up to make everyone pay fourteen months’ worth of taxes each year…
You could always just move to Finland - September is “autumn-month”, October is “mud-month”, November is “barren-month” and December is “Christmas-month” in Finnish. Problem solved.
haha this makes me think about, how, in the Breton language, November is Du (Black/Dark), and December is Kerzu, “dark as well”. Short and to the point!
This annoyed me from the moment, at age seven, when I asked my father what the names of the months meant. While not a constant annoyance, the fact that I had no real solution built and built over time, until finally I just said “nuts to this” and took the month names from the Tamrielic calendar from the Elder Scrolls series. This satisfied me, though it did have the defect that no one knew what the hell I was talking about.
Two games later, though, Bethesda changed the calendar so that the number of days in each month lines up with their Gregorian counterpart, which I choose to take as a sign of approval.
My friend is using Rosetta Stone or something similar to study Japanese and did the section on learning the names of the months. It’s obvious that it’s done on a template for all languages since they teach the foreign equivalent of “January is the first month. February is second month.” Etc.
Except in Japanese (and Chinese) the months are called “Month One,” "Month Two, and so on.
So, they had "Month One is the first month. Month Two is the second. . . " You think?
January is “oak month” and February is “pearl month”, though the words used to have slightly different meaning as far as I know. March to May use archaic words I can’t translate, I think they are related to spring and the associated farm work. June is simply “summer month”, July “hay month” and August “harvest month”.
Speaking of leap years, which normally occur once in four, Pope Gregory XIII canceled the leap year once every 100 years but then had to add a kluge leap every 400 years.
Surely I’m not the first to point out that canceling the leap year once every 128 years instead would have eliminated the need for any kluge and produced a more accurate average year length than Gregory achieved even with his kluge.
And I think most computer professionals will agree that 128 is a much “rounder” number than 100 anyway.
Bugs me no end. My dad’s birthday is October 8. This year I missed it (again!) because I have Oct = 8 in my head, so obviously his birthday is the 10th.
As the OP I’m very gratified by the responses to this thread. The only thing better than misery shared is misery spread, however, so I’m still waiting for someone to post, “It never bothered me before, but now that you mention it. …”!
At the risk of spoiling the fun, I really like it. I like anything in my life that smacks of history. The odd naming patterns of fall months make me think about how months and seasons were so pivotal in the past, and how our methods for dividing and naming time have been handed down through so many generations. I think it’s awesome that a quirk of ancient timekeeping still plays such a role in modern life.
[QUOTE=Alan Smithee]
… I’m still waiting for someone to post, “It never bothered me before, but now that you mention it. …”!
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think I can do that, but I may be able to work up a “I thought about it as a kid, but forgot about it until now, and now it bothers me.” Maybe not.
