Units of Time

David Grant Stewart, Sr.

I have also been asked to restore the knowledge of our mindless labels on units of time, so here goes.

A Russian counts years by summers. The Saxon did it by winters. The Russian asking your age says, “Сколько вам лет?” literally, “How many to-you summers?”

Days

Our weekdays come from a hybrid of the Saxon list of planets but disguised by the names of the Viking gods - Sun, Moon, Tiu’s (Mercury) day, Woden’s (Mars) day, Thor’s (Jupiter) day, Frigg’s (Venus) day. Saturn’s day is an anachronistic vestige of the Roman occupation. Saturn was the god of the end, of the last times, which is also why his holiday orgy, the Saturnalia, was celebrated at the winter solstice, i.e. 22 December, which everyone knows has been supplanted and standardized as the 25th for the Christ Mass.

As soon as we cross the English Channel we get this logic restored to our language - with the Roman countries preserving the names of the planets with slight but still recognizable alterations from the Latin names. Notice, though, that even there, there is no logic to the sequence of the names, which we should expect to be in their proper planetary order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn - now the name Saturn was appropriate when it was thought to be the last planet, but then Uranus and Neptune spoiled all that. Pluto, god of the underworld, was an appropriate name for what was known even to the ancients as a dead planet, not even in the same orbit or class as all the real, or living, planets.

The Slavic languages have a very appropriate name for Sunday – Недела / Nidilya (Ukr) which means “don’t do anything” or “No business” day.

The Russians explain why Sunday became the sabbath by calling it воскресенье - “resurrection.”

And the Greeks simply sum it up by calling it Κνριακή - the Lord’s day. This concept is preserved in some of the Romance languages, such as domingo (Spanish) and dimanche (French).

The practical-minded Portuguese call each day of the week according to what ward of the city the local fair is being held: segunda-feira (Monday) = “second fair”, terça-feira (Tuesday) = “third fair” and so on. A pity they didn’t learn anything from the Slavs about Sundays.

The ancient Egyptians gave each day of the month (of 30 days) a name of some distinguished personage. Interestingly, they named the 22nd day of the month after Moroni (I have documented here and here that the correct pronunciation of the hieroglyph pronounced “Inpu” by modern Egyptologists should be read MRNI, or Moroni). Not coincidentally, Moroni appeared on that day (as counted by the ancients, the day begins at sundown) in September 1823 as “he who stands upon his hill” to restore the book against which every man’s heart will be placed in the scales at the Bar of Judgment, at the exact time the earth was entering the constellation of Libra. I think I already explained that the hill has a dual meaning - Cumorah, and “the mountain of the Lord” which refers to the pile of stones that form the temple.

Months

This brings us to the months, which in English are worse than meaningless. Even what vestige of meaning clings to them is wrong.

January, everyone knows is for Janus, the god of beginnings. It would be appropriate to name a girl born in that month, Diana, the Etruscan name of the companion of Janus, but pronounced, as I said earlier, Jana. The -uar part of the word comes from the old word for season or year. Thus we have “verano” the Spanish “summer”, but spring is “primavera” = first part of the year (vera). So we see that January with its meaning restored is “the first part of the year.”

February was originally the last month in the Roman year, which explains why December was called the “tenth month”. Febr - uarius means “fever” or “purification” (isn’t that what fevers do?) month, a time to purify oneself from a year full of misdeeds. Our word febrile remains.

March is a vestige of the fact that the old C in Latin had a TS sound which in the Slavic languages and Italian itself has now become a soft CH - and was earlier Martius, for the god and planet Mars, the god of war (whence our word martial). The root marceo means to wither, shrink, pine away. We could say that it was the month of the East Wind both literally (March wind) and figuratively (a time of war, conquered by a foreign power).

April. We all know of women named April. I have known some that should have been named March. This is from Latin apero, cognate with our word “after” and has exactly the same meaning as old Hebrew Aaron. It means the follower, one coming after. You already know that April was originally the second month. My son Aaron was born in April. Our word “second” is a cognate; it means “that which follows”. It is more obvious in the Romance languages, “segondo” in Italian, from “seguire”, to follow. In the Germanic and Scandinavian languages it is “anden, ander” which means to follow, second in a series, any of the series after the first, and other, or change. This set of meanings existed with the original character in the language of Adam.

May comes from the old Roman “Deus Maius,” “the great god” Jupiter. It simply means “great,” by Jove. It is cognate with major, mayor, and so on, all meaning “greater.”

June of course is from the old Roman tribe Junius. Being a namesake, it need have no meaning, but the word is cognate with “jungo” and “jugo” whence our words “join” and “yoke.” Appropriate, since many a young man takes upon him during this month, the conjugal yoke as he is joined in what is hoped will be holy matrimony. The meaning of the name of this month is identical with the old Hebrew name Levi.

July and August are known to be named for Julius and Augustus. Julius was the name of a Roman tribe in addition to the emperor. The month was previously called Quintilis, the fifth month. I do not know the origin of the name Julius. JULUS means the soft fur or moss that grows on a plant.

September - December are of course the simple ordinal names of those months. The -ber or -mber suffix seems to be a Graeco-Roman transcription of “var” meaning the time of year, as already mentioned, but I do not have the documentation to prove it at the moment. In Modern Greek the letter beta is pronounced V, and the Greeks use the consonantal cluster MV to produce the hard B sound, so that alone should prove my point.

Now let’s look at the western Slavic names of the months, which are sensible enough to be descriptive:

January in Czech is leden = icy.

But the cold gets worse. February in Ukrainian [same pronunciation in Polish) is лютий which means severe.

March in Ukrainian is березнь which signifies the time of the birch trees.

April in Polish is kwiecień which signifies “flowery.”

May in Serbian is свибањ which means “sprouting, shooting upward”.

I am not jumping around for variety. The Slavic languages are inconsistent, so I have to. June in Serbian is липањ, (oddly enough the Ukrainian word for July) which means “devoured” but in Polish it is czerwiec which means to turn red.

July in Serbian is српањ which means harvested with a sickle or scythe. You get the idea that this is a northern climate with a short growing season.

August in Croatian is kolovoz, dance. Now that the harvest is over, you can. But the Czechs are still at it. August in Czech is srpen, harvesting with a sickle or scythe, essentially the same word as the Serbian July.

September in Czech is zaři which means “it shines”. Must be the harvest moon. In Ukrainian it is вересень which means covered with heather.

October in Czech is říjen, rutting season. Less earthy Croatian has listopad, leaf falling.

November in Polish is the same word as the Croatian word for October, with the same meaning. You’d expect the opposite, with Poland being entirely north of Yugoslavia. Same with Czech and Ukrainian. In Serbian we have студени which simply means “cold.” The word is transliterated “studeni” which you can’t help associating with a shivering student. But if November is “cold” then what are they going to call December?

December in Polish is grudzień, clodded earth - it isn’t muddy any more.