Latin word for calendar

Romans named the days of the week after the seven known planets–or rather, celestial bodies—which had been named after Roman gods: Sol, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Jove (Jupiter), Venus, and Saturn. As used in the Roman calendar, the gods’ names were in the genitive singular case, which meant each day was a day «of» or «assigned to» a certain god.

• dies Solis, «day of the Sun»
• dies Lunae, «day of the Moon»
• dies Martis, «day of Mars» (Roman god of war)
• dies Mercurii, «day of Mercury» (Roman messenger of the gods and god of commerce, travel, thievery, eloquence, and science.) 
• dies Iovis, «day of Jupiter» (Roman god who created thunder and lightning; patron of the  Roman state) 
• dies Veneris, «day of Venus» (Roman goddess of love and beauty)
• dies Saturni, «day of Saturn» (Roman god of agriculture)

Latin and Modern Romance Languages

All of the Romance languages–French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, and others—were derived from Latin. The development of those languages over the last 2,000 years has been traced using ancient documents, but even without looking at those documents, the modern-day names of the week have clear similarities to the Latin terms. Even the Latin word for «days» (dies) is derived from the Latin «from the gods» (deus, diis ablative plural), and it too is reflected in the endings of the Romance language day terms («di» or «es»).

Origins of the Seven-Planet Week

Although the names of the week used by modern languages don’t refer to gods that modern people worship, the Roman names definitely did name the days after the celestial bodies associated with particular gods—and so did other ancient calendars.

The modern seven-day week with days named after gods associated with celestial bodies, is likely to have originated in Mesopotamia between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. The lunar-based Babylonian month had four seven-day periods, with one or two extra days to account for the movements of the moon. The seven days were (probably) named for the seven known major celestial bodies, or rather for their most important deities associated with those bodies. That calendar was communicated to the Hebrews during the Judean exile in Babylon (586–537 BCE), who were forced to use the imperial calendar of Nebuchadnezzar and adopted it for their own use after they returned to Jerusalem.

There’s no direct evidence for the use of celestial bodies as name days in Babylonia—but there is in the Judean calendar. The seventh day is called Shabbat in the Hebrew bible—the Aramaic term is «shabta» and in English «Sabbath.» All of those terms are derived from the Babylonian word «shabbatu,» originally associated with the full moon. All of the Indo-European languages use some form of the word to refer to Saturday or Sunday; the Babylonian sun god was named Shamash.

Adoption of the Seven Day Planetary Week

The Greeks adopted the calendar from the Babylonians, but the rest of the Mediterranean region and beyond did not adopt the seven day week until the first century CE. That spread into the hinterlands of the Roman empire is attributed to the Jewish diaspora, when the Jewish people left Israel for the far-flung elements of the Roman empire after the Second Temple destruction in 70 CE.

The Romans didn’t borrow directly from the Babylonians, they emulated the Greeks, who did. Graffiti in Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, includes references to the days of the week named by a planetary god. But in general, the seven-day week was not widely used until the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (306–337 CE) introduced the seven-day week into the Julian calendar. The early Christian church leaders were appalled at the use of pagan gods for names and did their best to replace them with numbers, but with no long-lasting success. 

—Edited by Carly Silver

Sources and Further Reading

• Falk, Michael. «Astronomical Names for the Days of the Week.» Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 93:122–133
• Ker, James. «‘Nundinae’: The Culture of the Roman Week.» Phoenix 64.3/4 (2010): 360–85. Print.
• MacMullen, Ramsay. «Market-Days in the Roman Empire.» Phoenix 24.4 (1970): 333–41. Print.
• Oppenheim, A. L. «The Neo-Babylonian Week Again.» Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 97 (1945): 27–29. Print.
• Ross, Kelley. «The Days of the Week.» The Proceedings of the Friesian School, 2015.
• Stern, Sacha. «The Babylonian Calendar at Elephantine.» Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 130 (2000): 159–71. Print.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The calends or kalends (Latin: kalendae) is the first day of every month in the Roman calendar. The English word «calendar» is derived from this word.

Use[edit]

The Romans called the first day of every month the calends, signifying the start of a new lunar phase. On this day, the pontiffs would announce the number of days until the next month at the Curia Calabra; in addition, debtors had to pay off their debts on this day. These debts were inscribed in the kalendaria, effectively an accounting book.

Modern calendars count the number of days after the first of each month; by contrast, the Roman calendar counted the number of days until certain upcoming dates (such as the calends, the nones or the ides). The day before the calends was called pridie kalendas, but the day before that was counted as the «third day», as Romans used inclusive counting.

To calculate the day of the calends of the upcoming month, counting the number of days remaining in the current month is necessary, then adding two to that number. For example, April 22 is the 10th day before the calends of May (ante diem decimum Kalendas Maius), because eight days are left in April and both end dates are included in the total.^[1]

Computation[edit]

The following lines of poetry aid calculations relating to the day of the month from the calends:

Principium mensis cujusque vocato kalendas:

Sex Maius nonas, October, Julius, et Mars;

Quattuor at reliqui: dabit idus quidlibet octo.

This means that the first day is called the calends; six days after the calends is the nones of May, October, July and March, while the nones comes only four days later for the other months; the ides comes eight days after the nones. ^[2]

Expressions[edit]

The calends was a feature of the Roman calendar, but it was not included in the Greek calendar. Consequently, to postpone something ad Kalendas Graecas («until the Greek calends») was a colloquial expression for postponing something forever. This phrase survived for many centuries in Greek (Greek: εἰς τὰς ἑλληνικάς καλένδας) and in the Romance languages (Spanish: hasta las calendas griegas; Italian: alle calende greche; French: aux calendes grecques; Romanian: la calendele grecești; Portuguese: às calendas gregas ; etc.).

The Latin term is traditionally written with initial K: this is a relic of traditional Latin orthography, which wrote K (instead of C or Q) before the vowel A. Later, most Latin words adopted C, instead. It is sometimes claimed that the kalends was frequently used in formal or high-register contexts, and that that is why it retained its traditional spelling, but there seems to be no source for this.

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• T.P. Wiseman, «The Kalends of April,» in Idem, Unwritten Rome. Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 2008.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chambers, Ephraim, ed. (1728). «Calends». Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1st ed.). James and John Knapton, et al.

All the numbers given below are in the form in which they would appear in documents from the medieval period onwards.

Days of the week

Dates of the month

Months of the year

Numbers written out in full (often used for years in deeds)

Example: Anno domini millesimo quadrigentesimo quinquagesimo nono = A.D. 1459

Roman Numerals (used for dates and years)

Phrases

Next page: Glossary

The evolution of the ancient Roman calendar

The word calendar comes from the Latin word kalendae or the first day of the month. It was the day when priests called the new moon from the Capitoline Hill in Rome. It was also the day when debtors had to paid their debts inscribed in the kalendarium from which comes the word calendar. Calendars were used to organize days for religious, administrative and commercial purposes and to plan for agricultural cycles. For example, the beginning of the year in the Roman calendar was also the beginning of the agricultural season. The last day of the week was the day when farmers came to the city’s market to sell their products.

The first Roman calendar was a lunar calendar, based on the Greek lunar calendars where months begin and end when new moons occur. Because the time between new moons averages 29.5 days, the Roman lunar calendar had either 29 or 30 days. It had 304 days subdivided into 10 months starting from March and ending with December (from the Latin word decem or ten in Latin), while no months were assigned to the winter days between December and March.

The second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius (reign: 715–673 B.C.), introduced the months of Ianuarius (January) and Februarius (February). The year now had 355 days and the days of the months had either 29 or 31 days with February (28 days) being the exception. Because the year only had 355 days, it would quickly become unsynchronized with the solar year (also known as the tropical year). To solve this problem, days were periodically added to the month of February. The month of February was actually split in two parts. The first part ended with the Terminalia on the 23rd. Terminalia was in honor of the god Terminus or the god of boundaries and it celebrated the end of the religious year in the old Roman calendar. The second part consisted of the five days between the 23rd and the 28th. A leap month called the Mensis Intercalaris was inserted from time to time (usually every other year) between the two parts of February, thereby solving the calendar’s synchronization problem.

This system of synchronization was far from perfect and Julius Caesar (100 BCΕ – 44 BCΕ) introduced the Julian calendar in 46 B.C. which consisted of 365 days and now started on January 1st. Due to the gradual shift in the orientation of Earth’s axis rotation, a phenomenon discovered by Greek astronomer Hipparchus of Nicaea and known as the axial precession, the solar year is circa 20 minutes shorter than the time it takes the Earth to complete one full orbit around the Sun. Therefore it was necessary to add a day in the year after a number of years to better synchronize the calendar with the solar year. Emperor Augustus (63 B.C. — 14 A.D.) added a leap day to the month of February making the average length of the year 365.25 days. Yet this still did not make the calendar perfectly synchronized with the solar year, as the year in the Julian calendar was still a few minutes shorter. As a result, the year in the calendar gained about three days every four centuries.

This problem of synchronization was solved and once and for good by the Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII many centuries later in 1582. The solution was to remove the leap day to years evenly divisible by 100 but not evenly divisible by 400. For example, the year 1900 is evenly divisible by 100 (1900/100=19) but not by 400 (1900/400=4,75), therefore the month of February in the year 1900 has 28 days. In contrast, the year 2000 is evenly divisible by both 100 and 400 (2000/100=20 and 2000/400=5) therefore the month of February in the year 2000 has 29 days.

Meaning of the names of days and months in the Roman calendar

The calendar that we all use today celebrates Roman, not Christian deities and a number of months are named after Roman gods. March, the first month of the year in the old Roman calendar, was in honor of the god of war Mars. While the origin of the word April (Aprilis in Latin) is unclear, some historians believe that it comes from the Etruscan word Apru meaning the goddess Aphrodite, thereby celebrating the goddess Venus (the Roman equivalent of Aphrodite) the goddess of love and fertility. May was in honor of the goddess Maia, the goddess of spring and plants while June was in honor of the goddess Juno. Juno was the wife of Jupiter, the god of light and sky and the protector of the state and its laws. January was in honor of the god Janus, the god of the beginning and of the end. February comes from the Latin word februare or to purify. It does not celebrate a god but was named in reference to the Roman feast of purification called Lupercalia (from the word lupus or wolf), which took place between February 13th and 15th. The feast’s purpose was to expel the evil spirits and to purify the city thereby bringing health and fertility.

July and August do not celebrate deities but were named after Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus respectively. July was previously named Quintilis (meaning fifth in Latin or the fifth month of the year in the old Roman calendar) until the Roman Senate named it July in honor of the Roman general Julius Caesar, July being the month of his birth. August was previously named Sextilis (the sixth month of the year in the old Roman calendar) in honor of Emperor Augustus who chose the month as it was the month of several of his great triumphs. September (from septem, seven in Latin) was the seventh month of the year in the old Roman calendar, October (from octo or eight in Latin) was the eighth month of the year, November (from novem or nine in latin) was the ninth month of the year, December (from decem or ten in Latin) was the tenth and last month of the year in the old Roman calendar.

The old Roman calendar prior to the Julian calendar had an eight-day week just like the Etruscans. The eight-day week was the market week and ended with the day (called the nundinum, related to the word novem or nine as Romans counted days inclusively) when farmers came to the city’s market to sell their products. Before the Julian calendar, the Romans did not name their days but marked them from A to H. One of the letters was the nundinal letter marking the market day. The nundinal letter changed every year as the year back then counted 355 days and as 355 was not a multiple of eight.

When the seven-day week which named the days was introduced following the introduction of the Julian calendar, the eight-day week coexisted with the seven day week until Emperor Constantine officially adoped the seven-day week in 321 A.D. Sunday was the first day of the seven-day week and Saturday was the last. All of the days honored Roman deities. Sunday (dies Solis) was the day of the god sun Sol. Monday (dies Lunae) was the day of the moon and celebrated the goddess Luna. Tuesday (dies Martis) was the day of Mars, the god of war. Wednesday (dies Mercurii) was the day of the god Mercury. Thursday (dies Iovis) was the day of the god Jupiter. Friday (dies Veneris) was the day of goddess Venus. Saturday (dies Saturni) was the day of god Saturn. In Latin languages such as Italian, French or Spanish, there is an obvious similarity between the days’ names and the Roman gods’ names. In Italian Tuesday is Martedi and Thursday is Giovedi. In French, Tuesday is Mardi, Wednesday is Mercredi (day of Mercury). Therefore these languages, the days of the week honor Roman, not Christian deities.

The Julian calendar

How Romans counted the days and years

The original purpose of the calendar was to properly time and plan for the various religious holidays. At the beginning of each month, priests called the new moon and announced the calends from the Capitoline Hill. They also announced the number of days to nones and the ides, both days of religious observance. The nones was the day of the half moon. It was six days after the calends in May, October, July and March, and only four days later for the other months. Ides was approximately in the middle of the month and the day of the full moon. It was always eight days after the nones. The Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of the College of Pontiffs or the equivalent of the Pope today, determined when a leap month (Mensis Intercalaris) was to be inserted.

Romans counted the days of the month very differently from us. We count the days after the first day of each month for example, we say «it is June 22nd». By contrast, the Romans counted the number of days to certain dates such as the calends, the ides and the nones. Instead of saying «it is June 22nd», the Romans would say «it is the 10th of the calends of July. The 10th because the Romans counted days inclusively (10 days to July 1st, counting the 22nd and July 1st).

The Romans identified the years by the name of the two consuls holding office in a specific year. For example, they would say «it is the year of consuls X and Y». In the first century B.C., Marcus Terentius Varro, an ancient Roman scholar and writer, introduced the AUC system (from Ab urbe condita or “from the founding of the City» in Latin) which assumed a foundation of Rome (“the City”) in 753 B.C. The AUC system was commonly used in the Empire alongside the consular year.

Religious holidays

There were many holidays in the ancient Roman calendar and most of them were religious. There were many fixed holidays or feriae stativae and many feriae conceptivae which were holidays with no fixed dates, the dates being decided by the priests. The Saturnalia was celebrated from the 17th to the 23rd of December and it was a holiday where Romans would party, treat everybody equal and exchange gifts. Interestingly, when the Romans adopted the Christian faith the tradition of exchanging gifts remained.

Lupercalia which took place between February 13 to 15th was the Roman feast of purification. Its purpose was to expel the evil spirits, purify the city and bring health and fertility. February also had a feast in honour of the Ghosts of the dead called the Feralia which is the reason why Romans would never get married in February. Romans also had religious holidays in March and in October to celebrate the beginning and end of the war season. Wars could only take place between March and October when the weather was good and food resources were not limited. The Ambarvalia was a holiday with no fixed date in the ancient Roman calendar, one of the feriae conceptivae, which celebrated the coming of Spring (around the date of our Easter today).

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