{"id":20232,"date":"2020-12-01T14:05:11","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T14:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=20232"},"modified":"2020-12-01T14:05:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T14:05:12","slug":"yulemonth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=20232","title":{"rendered":"Yulemonth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As today is the first day of December, I thought I&#8217;d look into the origins of the names for this month in various languages.<\/p>\n<p><strong>December<\/strong> comes from the Middle English <em>December\/Decembre<\/em>, from the Old French <em>decembre<\/em>, from the Latin <em>december<\/em>, from <em>decem<\/em> (ten) and the adjectival suffix <em>-ber<\/em>. December was the tenth month in the Roman calendar, which started in March [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/December\">source<\/a>]. The days between December and March were not included in the calendar as part of any month. Later they became January and February and were added to the beginning of the calendar [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/December\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jayarava\/5240779380\/in\/photolist-8Z7n8b-8Z7nyu-8Z4jeZ-8Z4iVr-8Z4iNn-8Z7mX1\" title=\"hoar frost\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/5207\/5240779380_d6f90e59fb_z.jpg\" alt=\"hoar frost\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In the Old English December was known as <strong>\u0120\u0113olamona\u00fe\/G\u0113olm\u014dna\u00fe\/I\u016blm\u014dna\u00fe<\/strong> (&#8220;Yule month&#8221;) or <strong>\u01e3rra \u0121\u0113ola<\/strong> (&#8220;before Yule&#8221;). The word <strong>Yulemonth<\/strong> apparently exists in modern English, although is rarely used [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Yulemonth#English\">source<\/a>]. December is associated with Yuletide \/ Christmas in a few other languages: <strong>m\u00ed na Nollag<\/strong> (&#8220;month of Christmas&#8221;) in Irish, <strong>Mee ny Nollick<\/strong> (&#8220;month of Christmas&#8221;) in Manx, and <strong>joulukuu<\/strong> (&#8220;yule month&#8221;) in Finnish and V\u00f5ro.<\/p>\n<p>In many languages the name of this month is a version of December, but there are some exceptions.<\/p>\n<p>In Aragonese December is <strong>abiento<\/strong>, in Asturian it&#8217;s <strong>avientu<\/strong>, in Basque it&#8217;s <strong>abendu<\/strong> and in Occitan it&#8217;s <strong>ab\u00e9n<\/strong>. These all come from the Latin <em>adventus<\/em> (arrival, approach, advent), from <em>adveni\u014d<\/em> (arrive) and the suffix <em>-tus<\/em> [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/adventus#Latin\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>In Belarusian December is <strong>\u0441\u043d\u0435\u0436\u0430\u043d\u044c<\/strong> (snie\u017ea\u0144) [\u02c8s\u02b2n\u02b2e\u0290an\u02b2], which comes from \u0441\u043d\u0435\u0433 (snjeh &#8211; snow) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8C\">source<\/a>]. The Cherokee name for December is also related to snow: <strong>\u13a5\u13cd\u13a9\u13a6<\/strong> (vsgiga) or &#8220;snow moon&#8221; [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cherokee_calendar\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>In Proto-Slavic the month after the Winter solitice was known as <strong>*prosin\u044cc\u044c<\/strong>. There are a number of possible roots for this word: <em>*si\u0148\u044c<\/em> (gray), <em>*sijati<\/em> (to shine, glow &#8211; referring to the winter solstice) or <em>*prositi<\/em> (to pray &#8211; referring to Christmas). Descendents in modern Slavic languages include <strong>prosinec<\/strong> (December) in Czech, <strong>\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441\u0438\u043d\u0430\u0446<\/strong> (December) in Serbian, and <strong>prosinec<\/strong> (January) in Slovenian.<\/p>\n<p>In Welsh December is <strong>Rhagfyr<\/strong> [\u02c8r\u0325a\u0261v\u0268\u031er \/ \u02c8r\u0325a\u0261v\u026ar] (&#8220;foreshortening&#8221;), because it&#8217;s a time when days get shorter [<a href=\"https:\/\/cy.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rhagfyr\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>December is &#8220;twelve month&#8221; or &#8220;month twelve&#8221; in Chinese: <strong>\u5341\u4e8c\u6708<\/strong> (sh\u00ed&#8217;\u00e8ryu\u00e8), Japanese: <strong>\u5341\u4e8c\u6708<\/strong> (j\u016bnigatsu), Korean: <strong>\uc2ed\uc774\uc6d4<\/strong> (12\uc6d4\/\u5341\u4e8c\u6708\uff0f12\u6708 &#8211; sipiweol), and Vietnamese: <strong>th\u00e1ng m\u01b0\u1eddi hai<\/strong> (\ud84c\udf83\ud861\udc6e\ud840\udd29).<\/p>\n<p>Are there other interesting names for December in other languages?<\/p>\n<p>You can find the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/language\/time\/months.htm\">names of months in many languages here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As today is the first day of December, I thought I&#8217;d look into the origins of the names for this month in various languages. December comes from the Middle English December\/Decembre, from the Old French decembre, from the Latin december, from decem (ten) and the adjectival suffix -ber. December was the tenth month in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,88,89,90,196,95,99,104,107,109,127,129,131,10,15,23,26,32,33,34,47,57,61,76,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aragonese-aragones","category-asturian-asturianu","category-basque","category-belarusian","category-cherokee-","category-chinese","category-czech","category-english","category-etymology","category-finnish","category-irish","category-japanese","category-korean","category-language","category-latin","category-manx","category-middle-english","category-occitan","category-old-english-aenglisc","category-old-french","category-proto-slavic","category-serbian","category-slovenian","category-vietnamese","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20232"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20258,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20232\/revisions\/20258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}