Month Names

Where do the month names come from?

Name	Comes from	Who or what?	Why?
January	Janus	God of Doors	This month opens the year.
February	februo	purify	This was a Roman month of sacrifices and purification.
March	Mars	God of War	Start of year for soldiers (no fighting during winter)
April	aperire	open	This is the month when trees open their leaves.
May	Maia	Goddess of Growth	This is the month when plants really start to grow.
June	Juno	Queen of the Gods
July	Julius Caesar	Ruler of Rome	He reorganised the calendar.
August	Augustus	Ruler of Rome	He thought he was at least as important as Julius Caesar!
September	septem	seven	Seventh month (counting from March)
October	octo	eight	Eighth month (counting from March)
November	novem	nine	Ninth month (counting from March)
December	decem	ten	Tenth month (counting from March)

When you look at September, October, November and December, it seems as if the Romans couldn't count! But their year used to start in March. When Julius Caesar reorganised the calendar and made it start in January, he kept the old names, apart from one month, which he called after himself. Augustus came after Julius Caesar and changed the name of another month.

The Romans had the same months as us. They had special names for the first day in the month (the Kalends), the seventh day (the Nones) and the fifteenth (the Ides). The Kalends belonged to Juno. The Ides belonged to Jupiter. They did not have weeks like us.

The infomation on this page comes from Plutarch, who has some other ideas about month names as well. Click here for a translation of Plutarch's description.