Did you know the names of the last four calendar months have remained constant since the Roman calendar:
– SEPTEMBER – The 7th month of the year – from Latin, septem ‘seven’
– OCTOBER – The 8th month of the year – from Latin, octo ‘eight’
– NOVEMBER – The 9th month of the year – from Latin, novem ‘nine’
– DECEMBER – The 10th month of the year – from Latin, decem ‘ten’
While the names stayed the same, September to December are now the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th months in our modern-day Gregorian calendar (as it was in the preceding Julian calendar).
In Roman times, the calendar only had ten months and began with March! It may be that the period at the end of the year (c 61 days) was simply un-named and undivided, or it may be that two un-named months existed. The reason for the strange anonymity of this period is probably because it was wintertime. The main purpose of a calendar at this time would have been to chart the changes of the agricultural seasons and the major festivals of Rome; wintertime was a period of effective stagnation in farming, war, and religion, so there was no need for a name.
The month of December originally consisted of 30 days. After January and February were added to the calendar (around 700 BCE), December was shortened to 29 days. Then, two days were added to December in the subsequent Julian calendar, making it 31 days long.