January - the doorway into the New Year

A pinch and a punch for the first day of the month, well okay the second day, but its close enough I hope.

I thought I’d have a look at where our words for the months come from and starting with January seemed a logical way to go about it, especially it being the New Year and all.

So January – the word derives from the Roman God Janus. He was known as the God of gates or doorways – the Roman word for door being ianus. He could see forwards into the future and back into the past and had two faces, one young and one old.

In Rome his temples had two doors which were closed only when the Empire was not at war.

There is also a four-faced version of Janus known as Janus Quadrifrons, with each face representing one of the four seasons.

Many countries use variations of the name Janus for the first month of the year (in the Gregorian and Julian calendars). Some examples include:

Januari – Dutch

Januar – Danish

Janeiro – Portuguese

Janvier - French

However some countries use different words for the first month of the year, for example:

In Japanese January is Ichigatsu, which literally means first moon.

In Czech it is Leden, meaning ice month and in Turkish it is Ocak.

Sources:

The Dictionary of Mythology by J.A. Coleman, 2008 (ISBN: 9781841934242)

Omniglot Months of the Year in many languages: http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/months1.php

And yes, I admit I started on Wikipedia for this one!

Von