WHY IS NOVEMBER?

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12471, 12 June 1926, Page 16

WHY IS NOVEMBER?

Since “noveni” in Latin means nine, wliy should this month, the eleventh of the year, be called name which implies that it is the ninth? In the same way September is tho ninth month, not as one would imagine the seventh ; October is the tenth, not the eighth, and December is not the tenth, but the twelfth. *lllO answer goes back, to the veryearly days of Rome, times of which we have but a fragmentary knowledge. In those davs the Romans got along with a year of ten months, of which March was the first and December the tenth and last. November really was tho ninth month. Numa, one of the early kings of Rome, added two more months, January and February, so that the Roman year cum© to have 12 months as> the year of the Greeks and Kgyptinns already had. It was Juliu<? Caeear who made the year begin on January 1, and he apparently chose that day because January is the day that begins nearest to the inter solstice (the shortest day) in ihe northern hemisphere. In Australia, of course, January comes just after the longest day. There is no real reason why the year should begin on January Ist rather than on any other day. A solar year is the time that the earth takes to go once round the sun. You can begin the year at anv time you like, and the next year will begin 365 days away from that time. As n matter of fact, the earth takes just a little more than 365 days to go round the sun —365 days 5 hours 18 minutes 40 seconds. It is because our ordinary years are n little short that an extra dav is given to February every four years. AnO it is because one extra day in four years is just a little too much the year 1900 was not a leap year, and did not have the extra day. though it would have had it jf it had been divisible by

four and had not ended in twS noughts. Why or wlion the day was first given 24 hours, with 60 minutes in each hour and 60 seconds in each minute no one seems to know. It would hare been just as easy and more convenient to have had 20 hours of 100 minutes with 100 seconds in each minute. No ono could have run 100 yards in 10 seconds then, because the seconds would have been just a little shorter ■ —but they would have gene just as fast.