Month by month

[muckefuck]

Ever wonder what the names of the months might look like in the Romance languages if everyone hadn't decided to be boring and keep the old Latin names? Well, we might get an idea by looking at the traditional Rumanian month names:
modern / TRADITIONAL

1. ianuarie / GERAR--popular development of the same word (cf. Catalan gener, Austrian German Jänner) influenced by ger "frost"
2. februarie / FAURAR--ditto, in all likelihood, despite a surface resemblance to faur "(black)smith"
3. martie / MARŢIŞOR--literally, "trinket"; possibly related to mâţişori "catkins"
4. aprilie / PRIER--again, a popular development of the same word
5. mai / FLORAR--related to floră "flower"
6. iunie / CIRESAR--from cireaşă "cherry"
7. iulie / CUPTOR--lit. "oven" (from Latin COCTOR "cook; limeburner")
8. august / GUSTAR--probably another popular development, in this case possibly influenced by gustă "taste"
9. septembrie / RAPCIUNE (VINICERIU)--not sure about the primary name, but the second refers to winemaking
10. octombrie / BRUMAREL--derived from brumă "hoarfrost"
11. noiembrie / BRUMAR--see above
12. decembrie / UNDREA--may be related to the feast of St. Andrew (Rum. Andrei), which falls on the last day of November

In other words, expect folk-etymology galore, coupled with some interesting new innovations.

Comments

[alcarilinque.livejournal.com]

Way cool!

[lhn.livejournal.com]

10. octombrie / BRUMAREL--derived from brumă "hoarfrost"
11. noiembrie / BRUMAR--see above

I'm guessing these are linguistically akin to "Brumaire" on the French revolutionary calendar, which overlapped October and November.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The root is Latin BRUMA "winter" (contraction of BREVIMA "shortest [day]") which metonymically acquires the meaning "fog" in French. Given the overall pattern of deriving the names of the months in the Revolutionary Calendar from natural phenomena (i.e. brumaire is followed by frimaire [frimas "frost"], nivôse [Latin nix "snow"], pluviôse [Latin pluvia "rain"], etc.), I think the name of the month should be interpreted as "foggy" rather than "wintry". The coincidence is striking though: Two things which are associated with northern hemisphere winter (hoarfrost and fog) end up giving their names to winter months.

(I suppose there's a slight chance that the Rumanian name influenced the French one, but this seems dubious since it wasn't until the 19th century that there was much contact between the two cultures.)