Calendar: a system for measuring the days and months of the year.
Calendar comes from the only word in Latin that uses the letter K, Kalendae. The Kalendae, to the Romas, was the first day of the month. It was also the day debts were due and accounts were reckoned.
Yesterday, I posted December as the word of the day. On Facebook, one reader asked:
So wait were there originally only 10 months? Or were there 11? When did February get added?
Here is my response.Honestly, it’s a mess. Though obscured by deep history, it seems the Roman year once consisted of 304 days divided into ten months. The ten months were:
- Martius (from Mars, Roman god of war)
- April (possibly derived from Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty… but, no one knows for sure)
- May (from Maia, a Roman goddess and wife of Vulcan. Shout out to Birmingham, Alabama. If you know, you know.)
- Quintilis (fifth)
- Sextilis (sixth)
- September (seventh)
- October (eighth)
- November (ninth)
- December (tenth)
According to the stories, the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius added January to the beginning of the year. He also added February to the end of the year, right after December. At some point, left home and moved in between January and March.
By the first century B. C. the entire calendar was a mess. The Roman calendar, at this point still a lunar calendar, lasted 355 days. Now and then, to make the math work, the Pontifex Maximus (high priest of Rome), would declare a bonus month of 28 days, or so.
Things got even messier when politicians, in order to stay in office longer, would lobby to extend the bonus time.
When Julius Caesar came to power, he initiated calendar reforms. These reforms moved the calendar closer to the calendar we know and love today. Julius also managed to get a month named after himself. Quintilis became July.
Caesar Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, did the same. Sextilis became August.
Inspired by those guys, I have written my congressman, and have asked for December to be renamed Dwanember. Still waiting to hear back from him.
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