In fairness, July and August weren’t inserted, they were renamed from Quintilis and Sextilis, literally the fifth and sixth months of the Roman calendar.
Much earlier, Pompilius (history about whom is largely legendary, and actions attributed to him should be taken with a grain of salt) introduced January and February and set the numbering out of line. These months were previously just lumped in as monthless winter days.
All Julius Caesar did was rebalance the calendar without changing the months. The rename of Quintilis was posthumous.
Gregory XIII then further tweaked it to give us the modern calendar.
When I was learning english as an inmigrant kid, I was like: why the fuck do they name the months
Because in Chinese, it was just numbers:
- January --> 一月 1st Month
- October --> 十月 10th Month
- December --> 十二月 12th Month
月 = Month
And the characters before are just a number
Simple
(Omg I did it again, I went on a rant about language… 🙃)
Tbh, I was kinda disappointed about this when learning Japanese. (Am from Europe where probably all languages have named months.) The days of the week had these fancy names but months were just “[number] month”. If you name weekdays, why not name months?
I mean at least in japanese they used to have names but changed to the numbering system at one point.
oh really? good to know!
While in German months have names, when talking about specific dates (getting a dentist appointment for instance) you often use numerals. Does the 15th of the fourth at 11 work for you?
Kannst du ein Beispiel auf Deutsch geben? Ich lerne Deutsch.
Heute haben wir den achtzehnte dritte.
Danke sehr
Lol this is the second time someone linked this. 🤣
(Two Days Ago: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40007037/17338871)
Despite all her frustration with the language, she speaks it very well. And she’s totally right of course, Wikipedia even includes the demonym in the cheat sheet on every country page, just because no one ever knows them.
Numbered months should be much easier, but man my brain just can’t vibe with it
September, October, November, and December are named after the Latin numerals 7-10 (septem, octo, novem, decem) because they were originally the seventh through tenth months in the Roman calendar, which began around the spring equinox in March.
Right. A lot of people think new months were inserted, pushing the numbered months back - but actually start of the year was originally March. And that’s why February has just the left-over days + a leap year; it’s just whatever is left over at the end of the year.
It’s far stranger to me that it seems kind of half-assed. January, for the month of the god Janus. February, from februare, for purification, the month of purification. March, for the month of the god Mars. April (not quite as clear) possibly derived from Aphrodite. Possibly just from aperilis, meaning ‘next.’ Things seem to be getting a bit wobbly. May, seemingly for the goddess Maia. June, for the goddess Juno. And then everything goes sideways. July for Caesar, a human, but previously Quintilis, for fifth. August was previously Sextilis, for sixth. Then September, sept for seven, October, oct for eight. Nov, 9. Dec, 10. All those things in the first part, and then they just say, ‘Anyone have any more ideas for the rest? No? Oh well, then. We’ll just number the rest and call it done.’
We should simply move new year to the first of March. Fixed.
Congratulations you have invented Nowruz.
I we are complaining why not OCTember?
That’s a hard NOtober from me
No octopus Octember
