I can’t speak for Icelandic but e.g. in German spoken and written dates are exactly the same.
<ordinal day><month name> “22nd July”
or <ordinal day><ordinal month> “22nd 7th” (sounds a bit “technical”)
And it is worth noting that the document which is the reason that day a holiday is dated as follows: July 4, 1776
This is the answer, but to clarify: US speech does not usually specify the year at all. So our spoken usage is logical, normal, and descending: M D. Because the year is optional, and because English tends to put the most important words at the front, the extra information goes at the rear: M D (Y), in speech as well as writing. Now it’s no longer logical, but it is understandable.
And my answer would depend upon the language you asked me that question in. In English I recon I would say July 22nd. But in Icelandic, Swedish and German I’d say 22 Júlí 2008, 22 juli 2008 and 22 Juli 2008 - respectively 
Even though it would be 08/07/22 in written Swedish.
I’m an English speaker and I’d say “the 22nd of July.” The answer that it simply conforms to the spoken date is still a non-answer. Why do Americans say “July 22nd” instead of “22nd of July?”
If someone asked you the date, wouldn’t you think the *day *was the most important information? (They probably already know what month it is.) By your argument the *day *should go first.
Today is the 22nd of July; for the record, I both write and say it that way. It’s more common in the UK than “July 22nd”, I’d say.
I remember that being the convention in Britain, as well, although it’s been a while so my memory may be faulty.
Still, when in Rome…
I think it is a peculiar carryover from an era when folks would have said “six and thirty rolls” instead of “thirty six rolls”.
[As a database geek, I abhor months. No unit of time should vary its duration like that. Invariably someone wants to “add a month to this date over here” and then I have to explain that that’s a phrase open to interpretation. We should just say 209th of 2008]
A few years ago the Wall Street Journal had an essay on the “American” method of dating things. It all boiled down to a single document, and you just referenced it.
I use the ISO 8601 date format (YYYY-MM-DD) on my checks and most other documents. It’s an international standard, so why not use it and ditch MM/DD/YY, DD/MM/YY, and other nonstandard formats.
It seems to me that “4th of July” is used as a noun - the holiday name. When it is used as an adjective it is the other way “July 4th weekend” seems more common than “fourth of July” weekend.
As for the more general case, besides pure orneriness, the month is often more important than the particular day of the month. If that is understood, you drop the month, just like you drop the year in most cases. You already have the year fixed, month gets you to a particular month and day, if needed, gets you there.
friedo, why is month / day / year harder to handle in code than day / month / year? I’ve never seen a difference myself.
The best argument for the US standard that I can think of is that “July 22nd” is easier to understand than “22 July” because beginning with “July” makes it very clear that this is a date and the day of the month is following, whereas “twenty two” could be referring to just about anything ('My birthday is twenty two days after my sister’s" or “I was born on the 22nd floor”; you can make a lot of sentences where a month could follow ‘twenty two’ but doesn’t, but it’s hard to put anything other than the date after “My birthday is July…” )
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work so well when a year is added.
Of course, at least we get it right with punctuating numbers.
Really? My understanding is that in the U.S., the date on a check has no real legal significance.
Absolutely. If I’m asked by a co-worker “What’s the date?”, I’m more likely to say “the 22nd” than to say “July 22nd”, because we both know it’s July.
Hear fuckin’ hear.
I haven’t written a cheque in a couple of years, but when I get home tonight I’m going to take a look at my chequebook. If it’s true that they have date blocks with DD/MM/YYYY I’m going to tear them up and demand that my bank send me new ones with YYYY-MM-DD.
Thank you all for chiming in!
Seems like the most likely answer is that it’s written on that old piece of paper, and it stems from there.
At least, that’s the reason I’m gonna use from now on 
It’s pretty easy to solve any ambiguity problem here: Write the name of the month rather than a number. After all, the name of the month really is “January,” not “1.” Computerized sorting is a different issue, but there’s no reason that in dating your checks you should feel obligated to follow a method appropriate for computerized sorting.
The ones I got from TD Canada Trust are YYYYMMDD and I wasn’t offered a choice in the matter when I ordered them. Just out of curiosity (since I won’t need more cheques for quite some time) I looked at their online order form a couple of days ago and the date block now appears to be 20YYMMDD (i.e. they preprint the century).
We do go from smallest to largest–the months can only go up to 12, the days can only go up to 31, and the years can go up to eternity.
Makes sense to me.
You mean, like 22 जुलाई 2008?
The meaning of which is obvious to anyone who speaks Hindi.