Turkish is a very old language if we count its periods such as Pre-Turkish and origins such as the Main Altaic Language. This language, which emerged in the Altai region and enriched in different geographies for thousands of years, carries something from almost all over the world today. Most of them pass through the Anatolian and Mesopotamian regions.
Today, we express time scales such as day, month and year mostly with foreign words. You may have heard that most of the day names come from Persian. What about month names? We are sure you have noticed that some of them are not pure Turkish. We tried to briefly explain which one came from where and its meaning. Here are the origins and meanings of the month names:
fireplace
January, the first month of the year and therefore the first name of our list, is a completely Turkish word with the meaning of the place where the fire is lit. In 1945, the name ‘Kanun’ of Arabic origin was replaced.
February
The second month of the year, February, is called the Sabbath in Hebrew; it derives from the word “rest”. February, which was translated into Turkish from Syriac, refers to the eleventh month for Assyrians.
March
The origin of our bear, “the one who makes you look at the door and burn a pickaxe and shovel”, is Latin. Mart, which is a variant of the Roman god of war Mars, in terms of name, passed from Greek to Turkish.
April
The origin of April, which really started to show spring after the false March, is Akkadian. April, which is defined as the first month of the year by Akkadians, was translated into Turkish from Syriac.
May
The name May is used in different variations in many languages to refer to the fifth month of the Gregorian calendar. The name of this ‘fertile’ month, where the heat comes slowly, comes from Maya, the god of fertility in Greek mythology. Maya became May by passing from Latin to our language.
June
June means pig in Aramaic, and hot in Syriac. This name has passed into Turkish from Arabic.
July
the Sumerian god Tammuz; It symbolizes fertility, fertility, renewal and spring. This name, which passed from Sumerian to Akkadian, from Aramaic to Arabic, was translated into Turkish as July.
August
The name August comes from the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar. Expressing the sixth month of the Roman calendar, August was translated into Turkish from Latin.
September
The name of the harvest festival held in September in the Akkadians and Arameans was September. This word, which later passed into Syriac, also passed from Arabic to Turkish.
October
This word, which literally refers to the time of ‘october’, was replaced by the name used as teşrin-i first in the Ottoman Empire in 1945.
November
This word, which means cutting and dividing in Arabic, was named this way because it is the period that divides summer and winter.
December
Again in 1945, the word law was replaced. Its origin is Turkish.
1941
