Tags calendar months. What do you want to read next? New Year's Day Origin of Day Names. Holiday Folklore and Facts. Calendars and How We Count the The Month of August Holidays Why We Gather During the Worst The Month of September The Month of January Engravings in The Old Farmer's What Are the Quarter Days and What When is harvest moon. The Full Harvest Moon will occur on September 19, , at a.
Sign up for our email newsletter by entering your email address. The ancestor of our modern calendar, the ancient Roman calendar , had only days. Our current Gregorian calendar and its predecessor, the Julian calendar , both have 12 months. The month names we use today are derived from the Roman calendar , which initially had only 10 months , with the calendar year starting in March Martius.
The Romans named some of the months after their position in the calendar year: September means the 7th month, October the 8th, November the 9th, and December the 10th month.
However, when January and February were eventually added and the beginning of the calendar year was moved to January, the position of these months no longer corresponded with the original meaning of their names.
Today, we still call the 9th month of the year September, the 7th month. The Islamic calendar , the Hebrew calendar , and the Hindu calendar also use months to divide up the year. This sceptred isle. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. Jessie Churchill, San Francisco, USA Septemeber is the ninth month for us, but the Romans had only ten months in their calendar, so the number-names worked out right for them. This nudged the later months along by two and so September became the ninth instead of the seventh month etc.
It was only later when July and August Julius and Augustus Caesar were added that they became out of sequence. Keith Mason, London, UK The answer is obvious - the year used to start in March close to the vernal equinox rather than January approximately the winter solstice. In most of Europe confusion over this extended for quite some time, leading to the appearance in historical texts of "old style" dates year starts March 25 and "new style" year starts January 1. Susan Cartwright, Sheffield The Roman calendar had March as the first month of the year, so the count is correct: September is the seventh month.
What seems somewhat odd is the fact that only the later months, and not all of them, are "counted". Any explication for this? Wittig, Freiberg, Germany Further to my first answer and later contributions, it's true that there were originally only 10 lunar months, with a roughly 64 day 'non month' winter period.
However the two extra months, Jan and Feb, were added at the end of the year, giving a year of about days, with a short 'non month' at the end, before the time of Julius Caesar. He reformed the calendar, lengthened the months so they filled up the whole day period, and later the 5th and 6th months Quintilis and Sextilis were renamed after him and his successor Augustus.
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