If you are an English speaker, have you ever wondered where the names of the months of the year came from? Well wonder no longer as, like many elements of western European culture, we can thank the Romans. Not only did they widely introduce the twelve-month year, but they named the months, ordered them and established the number of days in each. Yet the word “month” is courtesy of the Anglo-Saxons, who also had their own names, so it seems only fair we contrast the English names with those of the Romans.
January (Januarius)
In Old English, however, the first month of the year was known as Iānuāriusmōnað. This is the Latin word for January (Iānuārius) that ended with the Anglo-Saxon word mōnað (phon. “monath”) meaning “moon” because a month was considered the period between one new moon and the next. Unsurprisingly mōnað became our word month.
Yet the Anglo-Saxons also had their own name for January or at least a period that rough aligns with it. In Old English this was “Æfterra Gēola” - after Geol (phon. “Yool”) - or the second month of what some may know as Yule. Yule was a pre-Christian festival celebrated around the winter solstice and the end of the year, which we believe for the Anglo-Saxons was December 25th. Such mid-winter festivities marked the beginning of lengthening days and may have been intended to ensure Spring’s return. Elsewhere the word is sometimes used to refer to the Christmas period or yuletide where tide was an early English word for time. We’ll come back to yule later.
February (Februarius)
The Romans gave us this name too. Februārius comes from their god Februus, who was associated with death and purification and was celebrated with sacrifices made during his festival, Februalia.
January was not the first month in the Roman calendar; that accolade went to March (see below). It stands to reason, therefore, that February cannot have always been the second. For a period it was actually the last month of the Roman year. Indeed, January and February were for a time considered “dark months” by the Romans and, for a while, were not even named. This reflected the idea that nothing could be achieved at this miserable time of the year, it being too cold to fight, to farm or head out on your travels. It was just this barren blank spot on the Roman calendar until, around 700 BC, the second King of Rome, Numa Pompilius [1], supposedly rescued them from the dark depths of the end of the year and gave them the ultimate upgrade, making them the first months of the year.
Again, Old English took on the Roman name while adding mōnað to produce Februāriusmōnað. However, according to “Venerable” Bede, the English monk and prolific scholar who is the sole source for much of our knowledge of Old English, February was also known to the Anglo-Saxons as Solmōnað. The precise meaning of “sol” is disputed with some saying it is simply a reference to the Latin word for the sun. Given that the sun is somewhat lacking in Northern Europe in February, perhaps a more likely explanation is that it shares a root with the English word “soil”. If so, then this means the Anglo-Saxons thought February was the “muddy month” which, for a largely rural-based society, would be very recognisable and therefore does make sense.
March (Martius)
Old English added a few extra names for the month of March. One of them was hlyde or later Lide which shares its root with the word “loud” because, according to our old friend Bede, it was “the month noisy with wind and storm”. In common with the militaristic overtones of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons also named March after their pre-Christian goddess Hrêða, the goddess of glory.
April (Aprilis)
April may take its name from the Latin word aperire, meaning ‘to open’, an allusion to it being the month when trees and flowers begin to 'open' or bloom. At least that is the traditional etymology, but in truth the derivation of the name is uncertain. As some months were named in honour of Roman divinities, April was sacred to the goddess Venus. Indeed, the festival honouring her, known as Veneralia, was celebrated on April 1st.
Once again, the Anglo-Saxons seemingly adopted the Latin name for the month, but they also had their own version, Ēastermōnað, or “Easter month”. This is clearly not named after the Christian festival of Easter because it is a pre-Christian term. If anything it is the other way round with Easter so named in English because it is celebrated in the Anglo-Saxons’ Ēastermōnað. That said, our only source for the Anglo-Saxon name is, once again, Bede.
In AD 725 he wrote De temporum ratione (“The Reckoning of Time”) to help monks calculate the date of Easter. In doing so he detailed various calendrical schemes, provided a potted history of the Earth and, thanks to the work’s popularity, helped fix the BC/AD dating scheme as the standard. It is within his discussion of calendars that Bede gives us the traditional Old English names for the months, with a brief discussion of each. As we will see, some of his etymologies seem to refer to the agricultural cycles of the Anglo-Saxon year. Significantly, however, Bede notes two months were named after goddesses: Hrêða whom we have already met in connection with the month of March and Eostre, a supposed Germanic goddess of Spring.
There is a problem, however, as Tim O’Neill points out: “…we have no other explicit references to this “Eostre” anywhere in any other source, which has led some scholars to suspect there was no such goddess and to posit that Bede didn’t have a clue what “Eostremonath” meant and that he simply invented an “Eostre” goddess to explain the obscure name.” More widely, Anglo-Saxon personal names and place names suggest links to a goddess called Eostre so perhaps Bede was correct after all. Maybe the Anglo-Saxons used the name of the goddess’ month, Ēastermōnað, for the new Christian festival since it fell around the same time of year.
May (Maius)
May, or mensis Maius to the Romans, was named after the Greek goddess Maia whom the Romans identified with Bona Dea, their goddess of fertility whose festival was held in that month. The association with a fertility goddess who oversaw the growth of plants seems highly appropriate for this springtime month.
The month of May in Old English was called Þrīmilcemōnað, which translates as “three milk month”. As Bede writes in De temporum ratione: “the fifth month is called Thrimilci in our language, because before, there was such abundance in Britain and also in Germania, whence the Angle-people came to Britain, they would milk their cows thrice a day.” Put simply, the longer days and improving weather in May led to lush pastures meaning Anglo-Saxon farmers were able to milk their cows three times a day.
June (Junius)
Again, Old English had an alternative name for June. According to Bede, June was the first of a two-month period known as Līða (phon. “leether”) or Lithe that we might recognise as midsummer, a time of gentler weather offering better conditions for travelling. The first month of Līða, i.e. June, was named Ǣrra Līða by the Anglo-Saxons, where Ǣrra has the same root as our modern words “early” and the rather old fashioned “ere”.
July (Julius)
July was originally called Quintilis meaning the fifth month of the original 10-month Roman calendar. On January 1st, 45 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar issued an edict that instituted a new calendar (the Julian calendar) that corrected astronomical discrepancies in the old. After Caesar’s death in 44 BC, the Roman Senate renamed Quintilis as “Julius” in his honour, it being the month of his birth.
If June (Ǣrra Līða) was the first month of the Anglo-Saxons’ Līða, then the second month was July or as they called it Æfterra Līða (“After Lithe”), or second Līða.
August (Augustus)
August, originally called Sextilis because it was the sixth month at the time when March was the first month of the year, had an even more chequered life. About 700 BC, it became the eighth month of the Roman year when January and February were moved before March by King Numa Pompilius. He assigned August only 29 days but Julius Caesar added a further two days when he porposed his Julian calendar in 46 BC giving it its modern length of 31 days. In 8 BC, it was renamed in honour of Emperor Augustus, who chose this month because it marked several of his great triumphs, including the defeat of his rivals Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the fall of Alexandria on what would become August 1st, and the wider conquest of Egypt.
To the Anglo-Saxons August had the rather inauspicious sounding name Wēodmōnað, or “weed month”. Once again to a farming society like the Anglo-Saxons this was the time of year when conditions were perfect for fields to become overrun with perfidious weeds.
September, October, November & December
But what about the rest? September, October, November and December are named after Roman numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10 (Latin: septum, octo, novem et decem) as they were originally the seventh (septimus), eighth (octavus), ninth (nonus) and tenth (decimus) months of the Roman year. With the revisions to the calendar, however, they are all now two months later in the year.
All was not so simple in Old English however, according to our friendly monk, Bede. September was variously known as Hærfestmōnað or “harvest month” for obvious reasons, but also Hāligmōnað, meaning “holy month”. Bede informs us that this was the time for pre-Christian offerings to the gods presumably in the hope of securing a bounteous harvest.
October was known to the Anglo-Saxons as Winterfylleð because it was the month of the full moon that heralded the start of winter. In contrast, November was known as Blōtmōnað, or “sacrifice month” because, according to Bede, this was a time for slaughter of sheep, pigs and cattle. November may have had the alternative name of Blōdmōnað, or “blood month”, for similar reasons.
And finally we reach December, the last month of the Anglo-Saxon year during which the Pagan festival of Yule fell. As already mentioned, if January was known as Æfterra Gēola (“After Yule”), then December was Ǣrra Gēola or “Early Yule” - much like June was called Ǣrra Līða, the first month of Līða or midsummer. December was also sometimes simply called Gēolmōnað or “Yule month”.
Reference:
O’Neill, T., (2017), “Easter, Ishtar, Eostre and Eggs”, www.historyforatheists.com, Available online (accessed June 26th, 2024).
Endnote:
1. Numa Pompilius was the legendary successor to Rome's founding father, Romulus.
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