The months in our current calendar may seem out of sync for a rather bizarre reason. Ever wondered why October, derived from “octo” indicating eight, is the 10th month?
Or why September doesn’t fall as the seventh, November as the ninth, and December as the 10th, contrary to their Latin roots? Many attribute the mismatch to Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, believing that their honorary months—July and August—skewed the calendar.
However, this isn’t quite true since these months were already part of the Roman calendar as Quintilus (five) and Sextilus (six), and were simply renamed later. The real cause for confusion is even stranger and involves an entire segment of time excluded from earlier versions of our year system.
In a recent TikTok video, Astrid states that “winter” was once considered its own period, separate from a calendar that spanned only from March to December. Astrid explains: “So who can we blame for this if not Julius and Augustus? Whose fault is it that the months and their numbers don’t line up? You might have noticed that this system counts up to 10. You might, therefore, be wondering, were January and February months 11 and 12? No, they weren’t. It’s so much sillier than that.
“January and February did not exist in the original Roman calendar system. There was the year, which was 10 months from March to December, and then there was winter, which was not part of the year. It was a different thing. This guy, Numa Pompilius, is credited with dividing the winter period into January and February and sticking them onto the calendar.
“But Numa Pompilius is the semi-mythical second King of Rome who reigned after Romulus himself, and even later Roman historians said that this was such a distant time that there’s really no way of knowing what was true and what wasn’t. We just have enough evidence to confidently say this older calendar used to exist, and then at some point, January and February were added.”
To cap it off, Astrid pointed out the Romans’ quirky approach: they named only the first few months and simply used numbers for what were then the fifth to the 10th months. Debates among commenters are diving into January’s designation as the starting month, drawing on its connection to Janus, the Roman god synonymous with beginnings, leading some to reconsider marking the year from the 11th month.
One commenter expressed a desire to discount winter altogether, joking: “I support reinstating winter as not a real time and letting us all have a rest in Jan and Feb.”
Another reader proposed a radical reshuffle of the calendar, suggesting that January and February should be moved to the end of the year. They explained: “Leap day should absolutely be the final day of the year, with March as the first month, so Oct/Nov/Dec line up with their names and every day retains its Nth day position regardless of leap years.”