Name: English Tutor Nick P Word Origins (19) Origins of Names of the Months
Uploaded: 2019-05-13T16:16:30.000Z
Duration: 5 min 8 s
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Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins nineteen. All right. In this

Present continuous

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.