Months are a mess. That is, the names of months are a mess. For instance, “September”, the ninth month, comes from the Latin root “sept-“, meaning seventh. Not only that, but “October” should be the eighth month, “November” the ninth, and “December” the tenth.
The names we use for months come from Latin, and as you might be starting to suspect, the ancient Roman calendar had only ten months. The beginning of the year wasn’t January first, either; that wasn’t proclaimed the beginning of the year until BCE.That was several centuries after two months were added, in 713 BCE.
The original ten months were Mārtius, Aprīlis, Māius, Iūnius, Quintīlis, Sextīlis, September, Octōber, November, and December. They added Iānuārius and Februārius — but they added them at the end of the year., Thus originally January first was about where Halloween sits on our calendar today (that is, it was just about two months away from the end of the year; January first wasn’t actually in October — even by Roman calendar standards that would have been nuts).
Speaking of Roman calendar standards, they tended to be somewhat flexible. The month Quintilis was renamed Julius (July) for Julius Caesar, and Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August) for Augustus Caesar. September was renamed Germanicus to honor the father of Caligula, but after Caligula died the name reverted back to “September.”
You might expect the Romans, who were in many respects quite organized, to have simply stuck to one naming scheme — either the months were enumerated (e.g. First, Second, Third, and so on) or they were named to honor something or somebody (e.g. January honors the god Janus, Marius honors Mars, and so on). Or at least they could have stuck to a combination of the two schemes. But no, “February” comes from “februa”, which means “purification” in Latin, and the name comes from a festival of purification held on the ides of that month. And nobody knows what “Aprilis” was supposed to mean.
Speaking of ides, that was a day near the middle of the month (more or less). On most months it was the 13th, but in March, May, July, and October it was the 15th. Not because those months were longer; that’s just where it was. The Romans didn’t number days in sequence; they counted backwards. They had the Ides, around the 13th or 15th, as well as the Nones (either the 5th or the 7th, and this one DID depend on the length of the month), and the Kalends, which was the first, but not of THIS month, only of NEXT month. So instead of saying, for example, it’s October 9th, they’d have to figure out when the Ides was that month, then count backwards.
But of course it’s not that simple. Because you’d count forward toward the Nones, then backward from the Ides, then (I think) backwards again to the Kalends, always remembering that the Kalends wasn’t actually part of whatever month you were in. Not only that, but they had to do all this in Roman Numerals. Then, back in the days when they only had 10 months but their calendar was supposed to be basically a lunar calendar (and even then the moon orbited the earth 12 times per year), they’d add in extra days here and there. After they added another couple of months, February was the last month of the year and any extra days (which they STILL needed) were added to it. But then February became the second month, and for no particular reason (other than superstition, of course), extra days were still added to it, instead of at the end of the year. That’s why in leap years the “leap day” is added still added to February, which really makes no sense at all.
By the way, in case you were wondering if we were going to get to the origin of a particular word, “Kalends” is the source of the word “calendar”. “Kalends” was derived from “calare”, which meant “to call out or declare.” That’s what the Roman priests did to proclaim the new moon that was supposed to mark the new month (occasionally a new moon really did correspond with a Roman month). The Kalends was important because it marked the due date for debts. “Calare” came from the ancient proto-Indo-European “kele”, meaning to call or shout. It’s the root of quite a few words in that area of meaning, including “call”, “claim”, “clamor”, and so on.
Because of all the adjustments they needed to make, Roman years were never quite the same length. But for a while the adjustments came under the control of the “pontifices,” or members of the college of priests of the Roman religion. That term became “pontiff,” and was later adopted by the Catholic church. A pontiff was essentially a political appointee and had a term of office. But when they gained control over the calendar — and in Rome, the “calendar” was, remember, a somewhat flexible concept — they simply made years longer so their terms of office were extended. Julius Caesar was a pontiff before he became emperor, and abused the system more than anyone. He made the year of his third term last 446 days. It was part of a calendar reform he enacted that was supposed to straighten things out (at least a little), but needed more revision pretty quickly, because they’d made a mistake by adding a leap day (to the twenty-fourth of February, by the way) every three years instead of every four.
It’s a wonder we ever managed to count up far enough to know what year it was when the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582.
