Here it 
is the first day of October and what is this Communication teacher thinking about? Pumpkins? Halloween? Witches? No! Word derivation. It hit me suddenly that that the last four months of the year all end in the letters "ber." September, October, November, December. Why, I wondered. So, I did a little Internet research for those of you equally mystified by this linguistic suffix.
is the first day of October and what is this Communication teacher thinking about? Pumpkins? Halloween? Witches? No! Word derivation. It hit me suddenly that that the last four months of the year all end in the letters "ber." September, October, November, December. Why, I wondered. So, I did a little Internet research for those of you equally mystified by this linguistic suffix.Here's what I found. A site entitled Origin of the Names of the Months makes it quite clear that the first eight months are named for various Roman emperors (e.g., July for Julius Caesar) or gods (e.g., January for the god Janus). The last four months are just named (in Latin) "seventh month," "eight month," "ninth month," and "tenth month." That is September, October, November, and December. Don't ask me why it isn't ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth month. I guess the Romans counted things differently than we do.
According to RootsWeb, earlier in our own century, when many folks still knew Latin, people would abbreviate the months September, October, November, and December, as 7ber, 8ber, 9ber, and 10ber. So, happy first of 8ber, everyone!
Is there anything about the names of months that mystifies you?
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5 comments:
I had no idea that's why the last four months of the year ended in "ber."
I figured it was just because that's when winter starts to really set in -- "brrr."
Heh.
If I remember correctly, the Roman calendar year began on 1st March; September - December would then have been the 7th - 10th months.
btw, I love Hawg's "brr" comment :D It certainly is getting brrr-y already, isn't it?
I recognize the sept, oct and dec prefixes as latin for 7, 8 and 10. Have wondered why those months have those particular prefixes. I guess Lynne has explained that for us.
-- Chuck
The Hawg made a wonderful comment!!
I'm always intrigued about the origin of words and phrases. Thanks for sharing.
Quite interesting! Thanks for sharing what you found out!
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