“Don’t Let ME Confuse You! The Romans Have Done Enough of That Already!”
Ah! It’s September again! That lovely time of year when we feel autumn approaching, with its changing leaves, its school bells ringing, its harvest-time holidays . . . and its irresistible displays of Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING!
I love the fall! But this year, September surprised me by setting my mind to wondering about certain questions of Time and History, to wit: Does the name of the month of September mean “SEVENTH?” And, if so, why on earth is it the NINTH month of the Calendar??
The first question had an easy answer: Yes! “Septem” in the name of this month IS the Latin word for “Seven!” (That answer did not surprise me, since, I did teach 5th and 6th Grade Latin at Paideia for one year!)
But the second query, the “then WHY is it the NINTH month??” question, was NOT so easily answered and required a fair amount of absorbingly interesting research. And some fascinating facts emerged along the way!
This month’s Article will follow the same entertaining historical bunny trail that I pursued to discover the answer. I could have entitled this Article “Confusing Calendar Conundrums!” But I preferred to put the blame for the confusion squarely on the ancient Romans, where it absolutely belongs!!
OK. So what were the Romans up to with September? Initially, they made a very simple and logical decision. They named the SEVENTH MONTH of their Early Calendar “SEVEN!”
But the problem was that the Romans’ Early Calendar contained only ten months, and it left a gigantic chunk of actual time unnamed and unaccounted for. This enormous Orphan in Time was simply viewed as “the winter gap,” when nothing important could possibly happen, be it agriculturally or militarily, according to the Romans’ ideas about what really mattered in life.
Unsurprisingly, the fiction that the “winter gap” didn’t really exist because it was a pointless waste of time was eventually overcome by reality, and the months of January and February were named and inserted into the Roman Calendar. It was ONLY THEN that the Roman Calendar went from being a TEN-MONTH calendar to the TWELVE-MONTH calendar we all know and love today!
Sadly, these beneficial changes to the Calendar came TOO LATE for the month of September! On the Early Calendar, the month had actually been the seventh month of a calendar year that started in March. And so its name “September” was entirely sensible and appropriate. BUT . . . when the Romans finally turned that ten-month calendar into a much more realistic twelve-month calendar, September became the NINTH month (which it continues to be, to this day)! But it was NEVER RENAMED to reflect its new numerical order. The early Roman nation, ruthless conquerors and efficient administrators that they were, apparently included a large number of people too lazy to rename a month that had just been given a new spot on the Calendar!
To give credit where it is due, however, I should not fail to mention that the very first (Original) Roman Calendar was established at an admirably early time in history: probably the 8th Century BC!
To elaborate a little on the foregoing points, here is a list of the months of that first Ten-Month Roman Calendar, with their Latin names and the meanings thereof. Note that SOME (like September) were given names that accurately reflected their numerical order on the Calendar. But most were given names for other reasons: to memorialize national leaders, to denote national priorities, and to honor certain national gods who were believed to be responsible for the extremely important seasonal activities that occurred during particular times of the year. Americans may be fascinated to realize that ALL of these months STILL retain the SAME NAMES given to them by the earliest Roman Calendar makers!
The Original 10-Month Roman Calendar (with Two More Months Added Much Later):
Month 1: March (from the Latin name “Martius,” for the Roman God of War, Mars, because this time of year marked the opening of the all-important Roman military year – that period from spring through autumn, when ancient armies mobilized for military campaigns. Mars was regarded as the protector of the Roman state and its armies; and the use of his name for the first month of the year was designed to emphasize Rome’s divine authority to wage war.)
Month 2: April (from the Latin word “aprilis,” a form of the verb “aperire,” which means “to open.” This name might possibly have referred to the opening of blossoms on flowers and trees, which of course occurred every spring.)
Month 3: May (from the Latin word “maius,” meaning “larger” or “greater.” Because the idea of growth in size relates to the concept of fertility, the word “maius” itself (and, consequently, the name of the month) honored Maia, the Roman Goddess of Agriculture.)
Month 4: June (from the Latin word “Junius,” a proper noun derived from the common noun “juvenis,” which simply means “young person.” All this emphasis on youthfulness and vitality was directly connected to Juno, the Roman Goddess of Marriage -- who may have earned that role simply by being the wife of Jupiter, the chief deity of the Roman state religion, who was revered as the protector of the empire and the guardian of laws and public order. An interesting side note is that Juno’s role as the Goddess of Marriage may well be the reason that June has long been viewed as the traditional month in which to get married!)
Month 5: July (This month has a slightly more complicated lineage. It began life reasonably enough as “Quintilus,” from “quintus,” meaning “FIVE” -- putting it in the group that, like September, was named for its numerical order on the Original Ten-Month Calendar. But, much later, it was RENAMED “Julius” by the Roman Senate, in honor of Julius Caesar, the first Emperor, who was assassinated in 44 B.C. **Parents of Paideia Grammar School Students: ask your children about this date, because they will recognize it from reciting the famous History Timeline!)
Month 6: August (Very much like July, this month was originally named “Sextilis,” from “sextus,” meaning it was Number “SIX” out of the original TEN months. But the Roman Senate renamed it, just as they had done with Quintilus -- this time as “Augustus,” as in Augustus Caesar, Julius Caesar’s nephew and heir to the throne. **Parents of Paideia Grammar School Students: ask your children about 27 B.C., the date that appears on the History Timeline as the beginning of Augustus’s rule. Remember, too, that it was Augustus who was Emperor at the time of Jesus Christ’s birth in Bethlehem!)
Month 7: September (The official name of this month was “Septembris,” which has been amply explained above as deriving from the word “Septem,” or “SEVEN.”)
Month 8: October (This was “Octobris,” from “Octo,” the word for “EIGHT.”)
Month 9: November (Another month named for numerical accuracy, “Novembris” comes from the word “Novem,” or “NINE.”)
Month 10: December (Last but not least was “Decembris,” accurately counted and aptly named based on “decem,” the Latin word for “TEN.”)
Months 11 and 12: January and February (These two additional months were eventually added to the Roman Calendar. Unfortunately, but very much in keeping with the Romans’ historical track record of Confusing the Calendar, “Januarius” and “Februarius” were initially added at THE END of the Calendar, keeping March as the first month of the year! This had the refreshingly positive effect of expanding the Calendar from ten months to the realistic twelve; and it finally accounted for all the time so negligently dismissed as unimportant by the Romans and dumped into the metaphorical dustbin of the old “winter gap.” But it was not an arrangement that aligned properly with the solar year. When that oversight was finally rectified in 45 B.C. with the enactment of Julius Caesar’s Calendar reforms, January and February were moved into their present-day FIRST and SECOND positions on the Calendar.
But it was also THIS CHANGE that pushed September from SEVENTH place to NINTH place, without making the appropriate name change!
That unfortunate fact noted, it would be remiss of me not to explain the origin of the names “January” and “February.” So, here they are:
Month 11: January (derived from the Latin word “Januarius,” which in turn referred to Janus, the Roman God of Gates, Beginnings, and Transitions. Many of you have probably seen depictions of Janus with two faces, one looking backward to the past and the other forward to the future. These facial orientations symbolized two important virtues: reflection and foresight, which became especially useful at the close of one year and the advent of the next, when people sought a time in which to assess what they had done wrong and plan a pathway to improvement.)
Month 12: February (the succeeding month of “Februarius” was the immediate counterpart to “Januarius,” because it was the month in which the Romans performed the “februa,” or ritual purification ceremonies, that relied heavily on burned offerings and the smoke that rose from them. These ceremonies were seen as ritual cleansings of the sins and errors of the previous year upon which the people had reflected in January – and consequently also as avenues of spiritual empowerment for making better decisions moving forward into the next year. As an interesting side note, the word “February” is related to the word “fever” because of its association with the concept of purification by heat!)
In Conclusion:
This Article began with my pondering the seemingly simple question of the meaning of the name “September;” but it has become a more extended review of the circuitous development from the earliest Roman Calendar of today’s internationally accepted Calendar. The foundation for the modern Western Calendar was laid during the period of Julius Caesar’s Calendar Reforms less than 50 years before the birth of Christ. The resulting Julian Calendar was used across the Western world for over 1,600 years, until Pope Gregory’s 1582 Calendar Reform corrected inaccuracies in it that caused a drift of approximately one day every 128 years relative to the solar year. And it is that very Gregorian Calendar that is used today to synchronize dates and events across the entire globe and to regulate civil activities in nearly all the countries of the world, including those that are most economically and scientifically advanced: the United States, Europe, and Japan.
In closing, I will categorically assert that there is a critical message to be learned from this discussion of the origins of our current Calendar: Paideia is a Classical Christian School, and NOTHING could be at the same time more Classical and more Christian than our modern-day Calendar! Yet the Calendar’s extraordinary development is but one of the countless gifts bequeathed by Judeo-Christian Western Civilization to the world and to all mankind.
Bearing this in mind, may it be our prayer that all of our students will absorb the incomparable marvels of Western Civilization from their educations here; and that they in turn will richly pass on to future generations the treasures that they have inherited!
Marne Kendrick
September 2026