HUGS Rose... hey look knowledge:)
Hope your week is going well

I guess they spent all the money and killed all their personal enemies so up next was the calendar. Silly emperors.

I knew octo was "eight" and knew deca was "ten" but since most months don't have number-related names I hadn't really pondered that until I saw it all lined up in a pretty little row.
Changing the calendar year around doesn't make any sense. Aren't there better ways to abuse power?

See, they all makes sense to me except for the 'Novennial' one. Octennial is 8, like how an octagon has 8 sides. Septennial is 7 because it is :P and Decennial is like dec as in decathlon .. which has 10 sports in it. Also, I think Sept = 7, Oct = 8, Dec = 10 (and maybe Nov = 9) in an old language - maybe latin?
Anna.x.(:

We learned about that back in school when some of us finally asked our teacher why September was the ninth month. I was more concerned about December being related to 10. By middle school we knew enough about foreign languages and math to put Sept with 7 and it just didn't make any sense.

PhyreLight is right about March. Crazy egotistical rulers like to play with the calendar.

January became the first month and is named after the god Janus who can see both before and behind himself because he has two faces. He made a good choice to usher in the changing year. It came after the Februa fertility festival time (they got switched at some point). Brits and their colonies still used the March/April New Year even after Gregory made his changes. July for Julius and August for Augustus...too many changes to note. You could write a book about all of them.

Fascinating! Thanks, Phyre! :D
*learned something today*

I heard once that March 1st was originally the first day of the year, thus making January and February the 11th and 12th months, respectively. When the Gregorian calendar was made, they moved New Years Day to January 1st.