8 ms·
Nobody ever explained in school that the reason the numbers in the names of September, October, November, and December (7, 8, 9, 10) don't match up to their act
by jihadjihad 3y ago
Nobody ever explained in school that the reason the numbers in the names of September, October, November, and December (7, 8, 9, 10) don't match up to their actual month number (9, 10, 11, 12) is because the Roman calendar began in March, not January. If you start from March, they line up perfectly. It also explains why the seemingly arbitrary choice of storing the extra leap day in February makes sense--just tack it onto the end!
- williamdclt 3y agoAlso makes sense to start the year when the weather start to get warmer, rather than the middle of winter
- pavlov 3y agoAnd the name March comes from Mars, the god of war, because it’s the month when military campaigns can restart after the winter break.
- vojev 3y agoMarch became the new year again throughout much of the West in the Middle Ages as it moved to the feast of the Annunciation. March 25th was New Year's Day in England until the Gregorian calendar was adopted in the 1750s!
- jjtheblunt 3y agoWhat's "weird" is i think we were taught in school that July and August were added by the Caesars (with their names), causing the 2 month shift you mention. Now i wonder where that idea came from, after this neat article.
- margalabargala 3y agoI was also taught this. I wonder if it has something to do with this, from the article: > On Sosigenes' advice, Caesar added another two never-before-seen months to the year 46BC, one of 33 days and one 34, to bring the calendar in line with the Sun. The additions made the year the longest in history at 445 days long, with 15 months. The two additional months were a one-time-only thing for that year, but I can see wires getting crossed and having that be a thing that was repeated for a while. July and August were never added, though, simply renamed.
- perihelions 3y agoIt's weird our calendar is named after actual people. The 1st French Republic briefly reversed this, but their solution didn't have staying power, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar#Months https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar#Mon... I wish everyone on HN a happy "Windy"! :) edit: Oh a cool fact in this tangent: the astronomer who discovered Planet 7 attempted to name it after a human—his patron, the British monarch George III. That would be an entertaining alternate history if it had gone that way! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Name
- cyberax 3y agoMany languages do have meaningful names for months. E.g. in many Slavic countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_calendar
- Muromec 3y agoThe best part of course is we use similar month names, but as they are anchored to agricultural seasons, they correspond to different latin names in different countries.
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- keiferski 3y agoMy favorite is April in Polish, kwiecień, which means something like “month of flowers.”
- bee_rider 3y agoWe would insist it is named after George Washington instead, if that name’s stuck. The whole situation would be insufferable I think.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoWe don't do that for Georgetown, despite being in Washington DC and what George it's named after being somewhat unclear.
- erehweb 3y agoAlso of interest - the Senate offered to rename November for Tiberius, but he declined, saying "What will you do if you have 13 Caesars?" (Cited from: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/welcome-to-tiberius%E2%80%99month.349424/ https://www.cointalk.com/threads/welcome-to-tiberius%E2%80%9...)
- hcs 3y agoAt the other end of that scale is Commodus, who wanted every month named after one of his 12 names: Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus, Exsuperatorius, Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, and Pius
- resolutebat 3y agoSaparmurat Niyazov, President for Life of Turkmenistan, was comparatively modest when he renamed only January after himself and April after his mom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_renaming_of_Turkmen_months_and_days_of_week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_renaming_of_Turkmen_month...
- notahacker 3y agoApparently they were renamed (from the no longer accurate Quintilius and Sextilius). Why they didn't get around to renaming the other numerical months, I don't know...
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- coliveira 3y agoThese two months were not added, they were just renamed after these emperors. In the minds of Romans, Julius Cesar and Augustus were gods.
- o11c 3y agoThe part that rarely gets mentioned - back then, months were only for the 'active' part of the year. The winter, when everybody stayed home, did not belong to any month at all.
- tzs 3y ago[Deleted something that duplicated part of the article] Google tells me that Romans did celebrate birthdays. I'm curious what they did when they were on the calendar that omitted the days between December and March. Surely some people were born on off calendar days. Did they just count the days of the off calendar time? Move the celebration to some time in the non-sucky part of the year?
- gregschlom 3y agoYep, that's actually all mentioned in the article :)
- Nition 3y agoHow did we end up with the year starting in January? If you've got eight months and they're often named like that - e.g. "oct" for the 8th month - and you decide to add a couple for the time you're not counting during winter, wouldn't you add them at the end and say the year still starts in March? Or is that exactly what they did and we changed the end-of-year point layer (the article doesn't say)? If so, why did we change it?
- throwaway396276 3y agohttps://www.britannica.com/story/why-does-the-new-year-start-on-january-1 https://www.britannica.com/story/why-does-the-new-year-start... Tldr; There were many changes, with the last change introduced by the Gregorian calendar in 1582. The American colonies didn't adopt it until 1752
- Nition 3y agoThanks, so that does seem to confirm that when the Romans added Jan/Feb, they put them at the beginning of the year right from the start. Unfortunately it still doesn't really have an answer to why they didn't put them at the end, except that it fits with the chosen name (Janus = God of all beginnings. But of course you could name something before or after deciding where to put it).
- coliveira 3y agoFor the Romans, the year was a government concept. They counted the years by the administration of a certain official. The change to start in January happened simply because they changed the date of inauguration for the council.
- antognini 3y agoThere were different standards in Europe during the middle ages and early modern period. Some places retained a date closer to the Roman New Year around the vernal equinox. These places used the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25). Other places (usually in the north) inherited a date closer to the winter solstice and so they used the Feast of the Circumcision (January 1). As trade between countries grew during the early modern period countries began to standardize on the Feast of the Circumcision. England was a holdout, though and if you look at record from the first half of the 18th century, they will often include both years for dates between Jan 1 and March 25. The British Parliament formally adopted "Circumcision dates" to come into agreement with the continent in 1751. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750
- notahacker 3y agoOn the other hand, I did remember from school that January was named after Janus, the two faced Roman god of beginnings, so explaining the year started in March might have resulted in more questions than answers!
- jcranmer 3y agoThe Roman calendar started in January at least as far back as the second century BC, and my understanding is that our sources are inconsistent as to who changed it, when it was changed, and why it was changed. Also, most of our sources are writing well after the change occurred (generally, they date to first century AD). (This is why the Julian and Gregorian calendars start on January 1, because the calendar they're based on did as well! Although lots of European countries did decide for much of the past 2000 years to start the year on other days like December 25 or March 25 or Easter). This gives me a vibe that a lot of the tradition of the Roman calendar numbering is based on a "just-so" story that is made up to explain an interesting fact without being based on any actual evidence.
- simonblack 3y agoOriginally, the year started on the first day of Spring: the Equinox. That was originally arranged to be the 1st of March, but slippage over the years means that the Equinox falls on or around the 21st of March in today's world. The New Year on 1st March also explains why the Leap Day falls after the 'last day of the year' on a day of its own: the 29th February. I'd like to see a new calendar that reverts to the Equinox as the New Year's day and has the 28th February (and the 29th February if needed) as special 'Non-Week-Days' as part of a New Year Holiday Period. That would allow the New Year to start on the same day of the week as the previous year. In other words, we would have a perpetual calendar that never changes from one year to the next.
- zer00eyz 3y agoI love everything about this idea. And then I think about every bit of code that I would need to write to support it and. From deep down inside, where my heart and soul are I can hear the screams "fuck no, fuck that". And then I remember that I only do consulting now and get paid by the hour and think "chaching, carry on with this as you please".
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoThe real question is if it's better or worse than the existing mess of date/time fun that we have to manage.
- zer00eyz 3y agoGood question! My bet is this: Existing nonsense: Doesn't change much. Transition for all the badly set up systems... Y2K v2 baby! Cognitive overhead for Users, therefor Product and therefor Developers will be huge. I think a lot of the rage will be fendign off stupid and bad ideas more than anything else. Note: any one who deals with dates and deep history will have a chuckle and think nothing of it.
- snypher 3y agoHere's a great blog post about fun coding around timezones https://www.zainrizvi.io/blog/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time-zones/ https://www.zainrizvi.io/blog/falsehoods-programmers-believe...
- eru 3y agoBtw, March is named for the Roman god Mars. The god of war. You can perhaps get a glimpse of Roman priorities from there. If I remember right, part of the reason the Romans shifted to starting the year in January, was so that their consuls, who were elected for a calendar year each, would have two extra months to prepare. This become increasingly necessary as Rome expanded, and military campaigns went way beyond their local backyard.
- oblio 3y agoI don't remember where I read this but I think the Romans got their calendar from Mesopotamia and it was based on a configuration of the sky from a few thousand years BCE. That configuration drifted so that's why we ended up here. I think the original January (or whatever it was called) was the start of spring.
- coliveira 3y agoInitially, there were no months after December, and the period of winter was not part of any month. When the calendar changed to have the year starting after December, they named January after the god of transitions.
- eru 3y agoDo you have sources for that? The story I am familiar with had something like 12 months of 30 days each (or so), so that there were only about 5 (or 6) days without a month. What you write sounds like they had almost a sixth of the year (after December to before March) not allocated to any months?
- card_zero 3y agoIn contrast, January was named after Janus, the god of starting wars.
- Balgair 3y agoAnother fun aspect here: The Italian growing season is in the winter, not the summer. In July-September, it's really too hot and dry to grow much in the Mediterranean, but it's much cooler and wetter in December-February, hence when a lot of the grain is grown [0]. And that leads into why March is the for Mars, because that is when the campaigning season starts, because that is when a lot of the harvest has been taken in, so now you can pillage your way across the countryside with all the food for your consular armies already packed up, so you don't need huge baggage trains to move quickly across the landscape. This is likely true for Greece as well. So the old myth about Penelope and the pomegranate seeds is actually talking about July-September, not the winter months. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, the 'dead' season was the hot part of the year, not the cold part. [0] I'm talking in general here. The specifics of a particular field, region, species, etc are very important to the ancient peoples and vary a lot over the whole region.
- Lamad1234 3y ago[dead]
- wodenokoto 3y agoNobody in school ever pointed out that there were months containing Latin words for numbers or what those numbers were.