I was thinking about the names of the months the other day, and one of those little things that you probably don't normally question suddenly stuck in my mind.
September, October, November and December.
Why do those four months all have ‘-ber’ at the end, and why do the numbers in their names appear to be wrong?
September is the ninth month, October the tenth, November the eleventh and December the twelfth. Yet hidden in their names are the Latin numbers seven, eight, nine and ten.
Once you know that, it becomes one of those little pieces of history that is surprisingly easy to see everywhere, but my head never let's me rest at that superficial level - I always want to know "why?".
September comes from the Latin septem, meaning seven. October comes from octo, meaning eight, November from novem, meaning nine and December from decem, meaning ten.
So somewhere along the line, our calendar has moved on but the names haven't.
The explanation takes us back to the Roman calendar. The early Roman year traditionally began with March and had ten named months. March was Martius, followed by April, May and June, and then the months that eventually became September, October, November and December.
In that calendar September really was the seventh month, October was the eighth, November the ninth and December the tenth.
January and February were later added before March, which pushed those four months two places further into the year. The names, however, stayed exactly where they were.
I quite like that idea. It's almost as though somebody rearranged the calendar but forgot to change the labels.
The ‘-ber’ part itself is a little less straightforward. It is part of the Latin forms of the month names and is generally connected with an older ending such as -bris, but its precise origin isn't as certain as the numerical parts of the names. This is one of those occasions where the more you look into the history of a word, the less satisfying the neat answer becomes.
And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It is generally accepted that it's merely a suffix that converts a root noun into something else but I don't want to get too technical.
It is easy to assume that every word must have been deliberately constructed from pieces that each have an obvious meaning, but languages don't really work that way. Words change over hundreds or thousands of years, sounds disappear, endings alter and old forms survive long after their original meaning has been forgotten.
The calendar itself has changed in much the same way.
The Romans eventually made January the beginning of the civil year, but the idea of a March-starting year didn't disappear everywhere. In England, the legal or civil year continued to begin on 25 March, known as Lady Day, until 1752.
That means that for much of our own history, the way people officially divided up the year was different from the system we use now.
And this is where I started thinking about it from a rather more practical point of view.
If you spend much time outdoors, particularly foraging, the calendar isn't really just a series of boxes with names written on them.
The seasons matter.
March feels like the beginning of something. The days are getting longer, plants are starting into growth and the woods are changing. April and May bring an explosion of fresh growth, flowers and leaves. By June and July the landscape is progressing, with plants, insects and trees all taking advantage of the longer days.
Then things start to change.
By September, the first signs of autumn are becoming difficult to ignore. Fruits and berries are ripening, seeds are developing and the first nuts are beginning to appear. The green, growing season is gradually turning into the season of gathering and storing.
October brings more of that transition. Acorns and other tree seeds are falling, fungi are appearing and the woods take on a completely different character. For anyone interested in plant and tree identification, it is a fascinating time of year because you are no longer just looking at leaves and flowers. Fruits, seeds, bark and the shape of the trees themselves become increasingly important.
By November and December, the landscape is moving towards winter. There is less fresh growth to gather and much more emphasis on what is already available: nuts that have fallen, roots, evergreen plants, stored foods and the resources that can be found in the woodland even when much of it appears to have gone dormant.
That seasonal rhythm is something we can easily lose sight of when we live by calendars, clocks and supermarket shelves.
For someone living closely with the land, March would have been a very obvious point at which the year was beginning to change. Winter was giving way to spring, plants were starting to grow and the resources available from the landscape were changing.
It doesn't mean that the Romans deliberately started their year in March because it was the most sensible time for foraging, and I don't think we should try to force modern bushcraft ideas onto an ancient calendar.
But it does make me wonder whether our modern idea of when a year starts is actually the best way of thinking about the natural year.
We have become very good at dividing time into neat twelve-month blocks. Nature isn't nearly as tidy.
There is no particular day when nature says winter stops and spring starts. One year the first blackthorn flowers might appear early, another year they may be weeks later. Hazel catkins can be hanging from the branches while there is still frost on the ground, and the first nettles can be appearing while some trees remain completely bare.
The woodland doesn't care what the calendar says.
And perhaps that is why I find the old March-starting year so interesting.
It feels more closely connected to what is actually happening outside, even if that wasn't necessarily the reason the Romans arranged their calendar that way.
When I teach our various Bushcraft courses, one of the things I enjoy is getting people to look at the woodland as a source of information rather than simply somewhere to walk through. What is flowering? What is fruiting? What seeds are falling? Which trees have lost their leaves? What can you find to eat, use or learn from at this particular time of year?
Those observations tell you much more about the season than a date on a calendar ever can.
And perhaps that is the real connection between an old Roman calendar and bushcraft.
The names of September, October, November and December are little fossils from a different way of organising the year. They remind us that calendars are human inventions, while the seasons themselves are something altogether different.
So next time you walk through the woods in September and notice the first signs of autumn, perhaps spare a thought for the fact that you're walking through what was once, at least in name, the seventh month of the year and so on through to December.
The numbers have changed, but the names stayed behind. And outside, of course, the woodland has carried on doing exactly what it has always done, completely unconcerned about what month we have decided to call it.