Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins nineteen. All right. In this
video we're going to cover the origins of the names of the months. How did the
names of the months get their names ? It goes all the way back to Roman times and goes
back to the Roman calendar. Julius Caesar of course was very influential in a
number of ways with this too. So let's look at the first one. January
January comes from a god or goddess in this case. Janus, God of the beginnings.
Janus is often depicted ... so she's often shown with two faces like one looking
one way one looking the other way. So one looking back at the year before. One
looking into the future. In the other you know, for the next year, for the coming
year. So two faces looking backward and forward . So I think Julius Caesar actually
changed that and made that the name of the month for this goddess. February
comes actually for not a god or goddess but for a festival. Februa, the Feast of
purification. You know, they so they had a lot of the
feasts to do with you know purifying oneself.
March, March or maritus, month of Mars, the planet. So Mars is have, March is actually
named after Mars the planet . Mars festivals were held in March in the old
Roman times too, So that's why they named it after that, and then we also have Mars.
Mars is also a god. Mars was also the god of War. So maybe that's what they had
festivals about. So yeah so you know. If you ever know any of the old Greek and
Roman gods. Mars was always god of War. So, so this came from both the planet and
the god. I guess so we got March. Okay. April, April there's a little bit of a debate
about it. Some people say the name comes from the goddess of love, Aphrodite. So
April Aphrodite looks a little similar, but there's some, there are others that
disagree with this. Some say this name comes from the word
aperire which meant to open in the old Latin The month in which buds opened, the
flowers opened. So maybe that's how a lot of people think this is more likely that
it came from this one. Okay. Let's look at May. May is from the Greek goddess of
spring Maia. Maia, so Maya that's where we got May from, So from
another goddess. All right. June also from a goddess June for Juno queen of the
goddesses, wife of Jupiter. So this is the Greek name remember when the Romans
conquered the Greeks they changed some of their names. So I think like later on
the, the, the Roman one . I think they changed it to Zeus I think it might have
been Zeus and Hera but sometimes you hear different names from it. But but we
got this one specifically from the Greek name of that goddess. So the goddess Juno
Queen the goddeses, s wife of Jupiter goddess of marriage or childhood good.
All right. Now July July comes directly from Julius Caesar. They think they did it
after he died in honor of him. So they kind of squeezed it in there and so
named after Julius Caesar in 44 BC July was also the month of his birth too, So it
had a double reason for kind of squeezing it in. All right. August , August was
the Emperor that came directly after Julius Caesar. The emperor was Augustus.
So this is named their Augustus in 8 BC. All right. So this what we got July and
August or named after emperors . Now ironically the original Roman calendar
had 10 months. Then they ended up adding two months to it. They added I think July
and they added August. But uh so September October and November is really
pretty simple it just comes from the Latin numbers for 7,
8, 9, 10. So in Latin septum is 7, octo is
eight, novem is nine decem is ten. So September came from septum. October came
from octo. November came from novem and December came from Decem, in the old
Roman calendar. So that , that's where it comes from. I know in high school I
studied Latin. So I always remember that I picked up on that right away, That's
September, October, November, December. But it's all way off to sayi this is supposed
to be eleven, twelve. But no. The old Roman calendar originally only had ten months.
Okay. Anyway, I hope you found it interesting. I hope , hope it was you know, food
for thought. Thank you for your time. Bye- bye.