Hello everybody and welcome to season 9! I hope you had a great summer and you’re ready to start another year with me! I’ve decided to make a small/big change. I never had ads in this podcast until earlier this year when I started my partnership with Audible (click on their link in the description and have a free audiobook and a free trial on us!) but, since we’re small ourselves I thought why not make some room here to help promote small businesses that don’t necessarily have the means to push themselves like big companies do. So if you or your company is related to languages, literature, education, entertainment, Greek related products and services, games, mythology and general fun stuff (which I suspect if you’re listening to this you have the same sense of fun as me) or if you know of anyone who will find this useful, email me at yourgreeksunday@gmail.com and let’s connect! .
Welcome to season 9!
Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!
The division of time within a year wasn’t always as neat and tidy as we know it today. The Gregorian calendar that we follow didn’t come about until 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII (13th) . So what was happening before ? A little bit of a mess. In Ancient Greece, every city-state had its own calendar and they adjusted their count based on the positions of the Sun and the Moon. The rest of the world had their own type of calendars. I cannot imagine how confused the Phoenicians, who travelled so much, must have been. Anyway. Then, the Romans came and tried to organise everything but based on their military and religious activities so, their year had only 10 months starting in March (yay! let’s kick off the year with a celebration of the god of War, Mars- and start conquering the world) , April (aperio meaning to open, to bloom like nature does) , May (for the earth goddess Maia and her festivals), June (from the goddess Juno the protector of marriage and the well being of women), July (in honour of Julius Cesar who also started making a little bit more sense by creating the Julian calendar paving the way for the order we have today), August was in honour of the first Roman emperor Augustus Cesar) and the next 4 months follow the combination of Latin numbers septem, octo, novem and Decem . And that’s where it ended. At 10 . January and February didn’t have a name. It was a time for peace and reflection between conquering and since it was too cold to March anywhere why name them, right? When the time to do so came however , Janus, the double faced god looking both in the past and the future became January and Februalia, the festival of purification and atonement gave its name to February. The adjustment of the Julian calendar didn’t happen overnight . It took many trials and a lot of errors. How many days in a month? What to do with the spare ones? How are we celebrating the festivals without misplacing them? Yes, it took time and now, we have a tidy system with a few holidays that move around for convenience, a month who is -or isn’t- a full one depending on the year but a 12 month year to suit all.
In the old calendar, the Latin name for the 8th month of the year comes from the Greek οκτώ (octo) meaning 8 and -ber , in Latin, was a suffix to indicate ratio so, the 8th month of a 10 month cycle. ΟΚΤΩΒΡΙΟΣ/OCTOBER
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