Have You Ever Wondered How the Months of the Year Got Their Names ?
Have you ever looked at the calendar and wondered why September is called September when it is the ninth month?
Or why October, whose name is connected to the number eight, comes after September?
And why do July and August suddenly sound like the names of Roman rulers while the months around them sound like numbers?
The answer is buried in one of history’s strangest calendar makeovers and it involves ancient gods, Roman kings, powerful emperors, political ambition, and one ridiculously long year.
The story begins with the ancient Roman calendar.
According to Roman tradition, the earliest Roman calendar had only ten named months and began in March, not January. The months were Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December.
And suddenly, the strange names begin to make sense.
Quintilis meant "fifth." Sextilis meant "sixth." September came from septem, meaning seven. October came from octo, meaning eight. November came from novem, meaning nine. December came from decem, meaning ten.
They weren’t badly numbered.
The calendar simply changed.
Tradition attributes a major reform to Numa Pompilius, Rome’s second king. Two additional months January and February were introduced, filling in the winter period and bringing the calendar to twelve months.
January was associated with Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions and doorways. February was associated with purification rites known as the Februa.
But there was a problem.
The old numerical names stayed.
So Quintilis, once the fifth month, became the seventh. Sextilis, once the sixth, became the eighth. September became the ninth. October became the tenth. November became the eleventh. December became the twelfth.
The Romans had effectively rearranged the calendar but left the old labels hanging around.
And, somehow, those confusing names survived for more than two thousand years.
Then came Julius Caesar.
By the first century BC, the Roman calendar had become seriously complicated. It was a lunisolar system, and keeping it aligned with the seasons required adjustments that could be manipulated and mishandled.
In 46 BC, Julius Caesar decided that enough was enough.
He consulted the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes and introduced what became known as the Julian calendar. The new system was based on a solar year of approximately 365ÂĽ days, with an extra day added to February every fourth year.
But fixing the calendar required one final act of madness.
Caesar needed to bring the calendar back into alignment with the seasons, so 80 extra days were inserted into 46 BC.
The result?
A year that lasted 445 days.
It was so bizarre that the year became associated with the Latin expression annus confusionis the "Year of Confusion."
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Imagine thinking a year is already long enough, only to discover that Rome has decided to give you nearly three extra months.
But Caesar wasn't finished leaving his mark on time.
The month Quintilis was renamed Julius, becoming what we now call July. The name was chosen in Caesar’s honor after his death in 44 BC, and Quintilis had also been his birth month.
Then came Augustus.
Born Gaius Octavius in 63 BC, he was adopted by Julius Caesar and eventually became Rome’s first emperor. After defeating his rivals and consolidating power, he took the name Augustus roughly conveying the idea of someone revered or honored.
And apparently, ruling Rome wasn’t enough.
Augustus got a month too.
Sextilis, the old name for what we now call August, was renamed Augustus in 8 BC.
But unlike the popular story that Augustus took a day from February because he wanted his month to be as long as July, the historical evidence points elsewhere.
Sextilis already had 31 days under the Julian calendar.
The Roman Senate renamed the month Augustus because several important events in Augustus’s rise to power had occurred during Sextilis. The month had become particularly significant in his political career.
So the calendar we use today is essentially a historical scrapbook.
January carries the name of Janus.
March remembers Mars.
May and June are connected by tradition to Roman deities such as Maia and Juno, although some of these etymologies are less certain than others.
July carries Julius Caesar's name.
August carries Augustus's.
And then there are September, October, November and December four months still carrying numerical names from a calendar that no longer exists.
September is basically walking around with a name tag that says "Seven" while everyone knows it is number nine.
October says "Eight" while being number ten.
November says "Nine" while being number eleven.
And December says "Ten" while sitting proudly at number twelve.
The funniest part is that nobody bothered to fix it permanently.
Several Roman emperors reportedly attempted to rename months after themselves, but those changes did not survive. Julius Caesar and Augustus were the exceptions whose names became permanently attached to the calendar.
So the next time someone asks why September is the ninth month, don’t blame whoever designed the modern calendar.
Blame the Romans.
They changed the order, added new months, renamed others after powerful men, and then left four completely misleading numbers behind.
Two thousand years later, we're still using them.
