The last four months are also named after numbers, but
the way these names were formed differs from the way the previous two months
were named. As we saw, the fifth and sixth months have names that end in ‑īlis
that originally were adjectives attached to the noun mēnsis ‘month’. However, the seventh through the tenth
months have names that end in ‑ber in
Latin, and they were also originally adjectives attached to the noun mēnsis. In English, the
names of these last four months are identical to the Latin ones, since they are
taken straight from Latin. In Spanish, they end in ‑bre, since the Spanish names for these months come from the
accusative form of the Latin names, which ended in ‑brem. The derivation of the months’ names from the numerals in
Latin would seem to involve the addition of a suffix ‑ber to the numeral:
Number (cardinal)
|
Month name (nominative)
|
sĕptem
|
(mēnsis)
sĕptember
|
octō
|
(mēnsis) octōber
|
nŏvem
|
(mēnsis)
nŏvember
|
dĕcem
|
(mēnsis) dĕcember
|
But we do not know where this ‑ber comes from. There is a feminine form of the adjective sĕptember that ends in -bris, but the origin and meaning of this
ending is uncertain. It has been hypothesized that this ‑bris could be a contraction of the word mēmbris, which could come from an earlier mēnsris, which contains the root mēns‑ ‘month’ (see above) and the ancient adjectival suffix
‑ris, but this is mere guesswork.
Month 7: sĕptĕmber (mēnsis)
As we just saw, the name of the seventh month was derived from
the Latin numeral sĕptem
‘seven’, the ancestor of patrimonial Spanish siete ‘seven’. The same root is also found in the learned Spanish
ordinal number sé(p)timo ‘seventh’,
which comes from Lat. sĕptĭmus
(sĕpt‑ĭm‑us),
which is derived from Lat. sĕptem,
though the exact nature of the derivation (the ending) is lost in time. Sp. sé(p)timo may have replaced an earlier
patrimonial *siedmo, for there is an
attested feminine siedma (1259) that
meant ‘one seventh’, which is now obsolete. Latin sĕptem is also a cognate of patrimonial (native) English
seven (cf. Chapter 20,
§20.8).
In English, we find the Latin name of this month already in
Old English, in various forms, often alongside the vernacular names for this
month, which were Hāligmōnað lit.
‘holy month’ and Hærfestmōnað lit. ‘harvest
month’ (from Hærfest ‘harvest’).
Eventually, in the Middle English period, September
in the classical Latin spelling, pronounced /sɛp.ˈtɛm.bər/ or /səp.ˈtɛm.bər/,
came to be the only name for this month.
In Spanish, setiembre
is the patrimonial version of Lat. sĕptĕmber,
or actually of its accusative form sĕptĕmbrem.
In Sp. setiembre, we notice the
expected loss of syllable-final p,
the change (diphthongization) of stressed short ĕ to ie, as well as the loss of the final m, which took place very early on (cf.
Part I, Chapter 10). This is the earliest attested form of the word. Much
later, however, the Academy attempted to restaure the lost p, proposing changing the word to septiembre. Nowadays, this is one of the few words that have two
accepted forms, one with p and one
without.
Most other languages inherited or have borrowed the Latin
name for this month, such as for example, Catalan setembre, French septembre (earlier setembre),
Portuguese setembro, Italian settembre, Dutch and Swedish september,
German September (spelled with an initial capital S, like in
English), Greek: Σεπτέμβριος
(Septémvrios), Russian сентябрь (sentjabrʹ), Arabic سبتمبر (sibtimbir). Basque did not borrow
the name of this month. In Basque, September is irail ‘month of ferns’, from ira
‘fern’ and hil ‘month’.
Month 8: octōber (mēnsis)
The name of the eighth Roman month was octōber, as we have seen. The name of the month is derived
from the Latin numeral octō ‘eight’, the
source of patrimonial Spanish ocho ‘eight’,
which changed just as expected, with Lat. ‑ct‑
[-kt-] changing to Old Spanish ‑ch‑ [‑ʧ‑]. Lat. octō also contains the root of learned Sp. octavo ‘eighth’, which replaced patrimonial ochavo, a word that is still remembered as the name of an old
copper coin that weighed 1/8 of an ounce. Latin octō is also a historical cognate of English eight, since they both descend from Proto-Indo-European *oḱtṓw (cf. Old English eahta, from Proto-Germanic *ahtōu; cf. Part II, Chapter 20,
§20.9).
Lat. octōber
has given us Eng. October and Sp. octubre. The English name for this month
is identical to the Latin one, which shows that it is first and foremost a loanword
from Classical Latin, not obtained through a patrimonial French version. In
Modern French, the name for this month is octobre,
which is obviously an adaptation of the Classical Latin word, taken from the
accusative form octōbrem.
Fr. octobre is first attested in
1213, but we know that before that there was a patrimonial version in Old
French, namely the patrimonial word uitovre
(1119). However, this word was replaced by one that looked more like the
original (but not identical, for presumably allowances had to be made for the
sound patterns of Old French). English too went eventually to the Latin original
in this regard, coming to use only the nominative wordform, octōber. In Old English and
Middle English texts, we find that October
and its variants are used, sometimes alongside the vernacular name for this
month Winterfylleð ‘winter month’
(OED), which eventually disappeared.
The name for this month in Modern Spanish is octubre, although the variant otubre (without the c) is also considered acceptable (by the Academy). Sp. octubre is a blend of the original
patrimonial word, Old Spanish ochubre,
and the accusative Classical Latin wordform octōbrem.
The ‑ch‑ in ochubre is what we would have expected from a patrimonial word, as
the equivalent of Latin ‑ct‑. Just
like Lat. octō gave us Sp. ocho, Lat. octōbrem gave us Old Sp.
ochubre.
What we have here is obviously one of the many examples of patrimonial words
that were refashioned to look more like their Latin equivalent source words. As
we have seen, it happened in French and it happened in Spanish as well.
The recent acceptance of otubre,
without the c, by the Academy, is due
to the fact that even after (re)introducing learned words with the consonant
cluster ‑ct‑ into Spanish in modern
times, the cluster, which is foreign to Spanish phonology, is typically reduced
to ‑t‑ in normal speech. This cluster
simplification is occasionally permitted by the Academy, in the formal,
official version of learned words, as in the case of the names of the months se(p)tiembre and o(c)tubre, and a number of others, such as acento and aceptar, that
in Latin have a ‑cc‑ cluster (cf.
Eng. accent and accept).
We have explained the change from Lat. ‑ct‑ to Sp. ‑ch‑. What is much harder to explain in
these words is the middle u that
supposedly descends from long Latin long ō. But this Latin vowel
never ever changed to u in Spanish.
It always changed to o. The fact that
there is a u in octubre (and ochubre) has
been explained by the fact that in some dialects of Latin, namely Osco and Umbrian
dialects, the word had a u instead of
an ō, and many of the soldiers and other Romans who
settled in Hispania were from those regions of the Italian peninsula.
The name of this month in most European languages also
descends from Lat. octōber,
with some degrees of sound and/or spelling changes. Thus, for instance, we have
Catalan octobre, Portuguese outubro, Italian ottobre, Dutch and Swedish oktober,
and German Oktober. The main name for
this month in Basque is urril or urri ‘month of scarcity’, from the
Basque adjective urri ‘scarce’.
Month 9: nŏvĕmber (mēnsis)
The name of this month in Latin, nŏvĕmber, was originally an
adjective (feminine nŏvĕmbris,
accusative nŏvĕmbrem)
derived from the Latin numeral nŏvem
‘nine’ (see above). This adjective originally accompanied the noun mēnsis ‘month’ and thus the
month’s name meant something like ‘ninth month’. Eventually, however, the name
of the month came to be just nŏvĕmber,
by ellipsis of the noun.
The Latin numeral nŏvem
is the source of patrimonial Spanish nueve
‘nine’ (stressed Latin short ĕ
always became the diphthong ie in Old
Spanish, cf. Part I, Chapter 10). Those numerals are also cognates of English nine, since both derive from the same
Proto-Indo-European source, variously reconstructed as *e-neu̯en, *neu̯n̥, *enu̯n̥ or *h₁néwn̥. The Spanish ordinal number and noveno ‘ninth’ is also quite recognizably related to the Latin
number (because the o in this word
was not stressed, it did not change to ue).
Lat nŏvĕmber
has given us the cognates Eng. November
and Sp. noviembre. Eng. November is a loanword from Latin and it
starts appearing in early Old English writings, along with the traditional
Anglo-Saxon name glōtmōnaþ, literally
‘blood-month’, so name because this was the month in which cattle were
slaughtered and dedicated to the gods and, of course, stored for food for the
winter. After the Norman conquest, the Latin name was used more and more and
until the Anglo-Saxon name was fully replaced by it.
All seems to indicate that Sp. noviembre is a patrimonial word, derived from the accusative form nŏvĕmbrem, as
mentioned above. The clue that it is a patrimonial word is that the Latin short
stressed ĕ was
changed to the diphthong ie (see
above), a regular sound change in Old Spanish.
As with other month names, most European languages have
received the same Latin name for this month by either borrowing it or, in the
case of the Romance languages, by direct descent (patrimonially), e.g. Catalan,
French, Italian and Swedish novembre,
German November, Greek Νοέμβριος (Noémvrios) or Νοέμβρης (Noémvris), Portuguese novembro, and Russian ноябрь (nojabrʹ).
The main Basque name for this month is not borrowed from Latin this time
either, since it is azaro ‘time to
cultivate/farm’, formed from hazi
‘seed’ and aro ‘time, period’. A
variant of this name is hazila lit.
‘seed month’.
Month 10: dĕcĕmber (mēnsis)
This month’s name is dĕcĕmber
in Latin, derived from an identical adjective in masculine form (genitive
and feminine nominative: dĕcĕmbris;
accusative: dĕcĕmbrem). It is derived from the Latin numeral dĕcem ‘ten’, ancestor of patrimonial
Spanish diez ‘ten’ as well as a cognate
of English ten, since both descend
from Proto-Indo-European *déḱm̥t. We
also recognize the root dĕc‑
in the learned Spanish ordinal number décimo/a
‘tenth’ (meaning either ‘number ten’ or ‘1/10’, as its English equivalent).
This learned word comes from Lat. dĕcĭmus,
which has attested early patrimonial forms diezmo
and deceno. (The word diezmo still exists in Modern Spanish as
an archaic noun with the meaning ‘tithe’, that is, ‘one tenth of annual produce
or earnings, formerly taken as a tax for the support of the Church and clergy’,
COED.)
From the Latin name for this month, we get Eng. December and Sp. diciembre. Eng. December
came into the language as a loanword from Latin and from French. The spelling
settled on the exact spelling of the word in Latin. (In Modern French it is décembre, pronounced [de.ˈsɑ̃bʀ], which is what is
attested in this language from the beginning, but in Old French and
Anglo-French it was also spelled december.)
Eventually, little by little, this name for this month replaced the native,
Anglo-Saxon (Old English) vernacular name Ġēolamōnaþ
(Ȝēolamōnaþ in Old English spelling).
This name was applied to the period of December and January, for Old English Gēola is ‘Yule’ in Modern English and it
refers to the winter solstice period (around December 21). At a later time, Ǣrra-ġēolamōnaþ came to be used for
December and Æfterra-ġēolamōnaþ as
January.
The Spanish name for the month is diciembre, which shows a few differences with the Latin name, which
tell us that the word is not merely a loan from written Latin. The change of
Latin stressed short ĕ to ie is what we would expect from a patrimonial word. The ending ‑bre as opposed to ‑ber is also not surprising, given that patrimonial words derived
from the accusative Latin wordform, not the nominative one, with loss of the
final ‑m. The change of the first
short ĕ to i, on
the other hand, is much less common. Note that the month’s name is attested in
Old Spanish writing as deziembre and diziembre. This tells us that the ĕ
to i sound change came rather late,
unlike the ĕ to ie one. This sporadic
(non-regular) ĕ to i
change is generally attributed to the influence of the yod ([i̯])
in the following syllable.
As we have seen for other month names, the Latin name has
been adopted by most European, and even some non-European, languages in which
the Julian Roman calendar was adopted, e.g. Catalan desembre, Portuguese dezembro,
Italian dicembre (earlier deciembre), Dutch and Swedish december, German Dezember, Russian декабрь (dekabrʹ), Greek Δεκέμβριος (Dekémvrios) or Δεκέμβρης (Dekémvris), and Arabic دسمبر (disembir). The most common name for this month in Basque
is abendu, from Lat. adventus lit. ‘arrival, coming’ and
‘Advent’, a word that in Christian theology refers primarily to the second
coming of Christ, but also to ‘the first season of the Church year, leading up
to Christmas and including the four preceding Sundays’ (COED). Other names for
this month in different Basque dialects are neguil
‘winter month’, lotazil ‘sleep seed
month?’, and gabonil ‘good night
(Christmas) month’, among others.
