Words have histories, and the names of our months are no exception. September comes from the Latin word for 7, October from 8, and November from 9. So why don't those numbers match their places on today's calendar?
According to ancient Roman tradition, the year once began in March, making November the 9th month. As the calendar evolved, November became the 11th month, while its name stayed the same.
Not every month kept its original name, though. Some lost their number-based names altogether, replaced by names that honored Roman rulers. We still use those names today.
When March Came First
Picture a calendar beginning with Martius, named for Mars, the Roman god of war. After June come Quintilis and Sextilis. January and February are missing entirely.
That is one ancient account of Rome's earliest calendar. It describes ten named months running from March through December. Quintilis meant fifth and Sextilis sixth; September, October, November, and December continued the count.
The Months: Then and Now
| Month | Traditional Early Order | Today's Order |
|---|---|---|
| March | 1st | 3rd |
| September | 7th | 9th |
| October | 8th | 10th |
| November | 9th | 11th |
| December | 10th | 12th |
Early positions reflect the traditional Roman account.
Ancient descriptions assign this calendar just 304 days. That leaves about sixty days outside its named months, apparently in winter. But how people actually counted those days is unclear. The accounts were written long after Rome's earliest period, and historians caution against treating the whole story as established fact.
The month names, however, make the old counting system easy to recognize. They also raise another question: how did January and February get ahead of March?
How January Took the Lead
Even ancient writers couldn't agree on that part.
Plutarch recorded competing explanations involving Numa Pompilius, Rome's legendary second king. In one version, Numa moved January and February from the end of the year to the beginning. In another, he added them to a calendar that previously had only ten months.
Neither account tells us precisely when the change happened. By the better-documented Republican period, Rome already used twelve months.
What we can date more confidently is a political decision that gave January 1 greater importance.
In 153 BC, Roman consuls began taking office on January 1. The consuls were Rome's leading elected officials, and the beginning of their terms helped define the political year. Romans commonly identified years by the men who held those positions, so the timing of their terms mattered in public life.
That decision did not invent January or establish when it first became the calendar's opening month. The political year and the history of the months are related, but they aren't identical.
The names themselves could also change, especially when Rome's leaders wanted to be remembered.
When Two Months Lost Their Numbers
Imagine checking a summer date and finding Quintilis instead of July, or Sextilis instead of August.
Both names came from the same numerical sequence as November. Yet neither survived the rise of Rome's most famous rulers.
After Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, Quintilis was renamed Julius in his honor. In 8 BC, Sextilis became Augustus, honoring Rome's first emperor. Those names eventually became July and August in English.
Other emperors tried putting their names on the calendar, too. According to the Roman biographer Suetonius, Domitian called September Germanicus and October Domitianus, using his own names and titles. Those replacements did not last; the older names returned after his death.
That leaves a curious contrast on today's calendar. July and August commemorate rulers, but the months immediately after them still refer to seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth places in an older year.
Changing names was one thing. Keeping the dates in step with the seasons proved far more difficult.
The Year That Lasted 445 Days
The Moon and the Sun don't divide the year into matching pieces. Twelve lunar cycles last about 354 days, while a solar year is roughly eleven days longer.
Rome's Republican calendar used an extra month when needed to prevent its dates from wandering through the seasons. But religious officials controlled those adjustments, and they weren't applied consistently. Eventually, the calendar fell badly out of step.
Julius Caesar's solution was to introduce a more regular, solar-based system. First, though, Rome had to make up for the accumulated mismatch.
The year 46 BC lasted 445 days.
The Romans inserted extra time into that single year so the new calendar could begin in the right season. It became known as the Year of Confusion.
In 45 BC, the Julian calendar took effect, with 365 days in an ordinary year and an extra day every four years. Much later, the Gregorian reform corrected the small remaining drift, producing the calendar widely used today.
Caesar's reform did not move November into 11th place. That had happened earlier. His challenge was making the dates reliable, not rearranging the familiar month names.
Look at a calendar now. July and August carry the names of Roman rulers. September through December preserve numbers from an older sequence. Even the rules governing the days reflect centuries of adjustment.
We use those pages for birthdays, appointments, holidays, and ordinary Tuesdays. They seem so familiar that it's easy to miss how many different eras are sitting together on a single page.
The calendar wasn't designed in one sitting. It grew through decisions, traditions, and corrections, while some of its oldest words remained.
Every time we turn the page, we're moving forward through time using names that still belong to the past.
References: Plutarch, Life of Numa, Chapters 18–19 · Suetonius, Life of Domitian, Chapter 13 · Francisco Pina Polo, The Consul at Rome · Royal Observatory of Belgium, The Roman and Julian Calendars
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