Lost In Translation: March

It’s been a long time since I’ve done the etymology of a month. I haven’t done one since…last August?! Geez, I’ve got to get it together. Or not. It’s my blog. I make the rules.

The word March showed up in the early thirteenth century, which actually puts it a couple of centuries ahead of march with a small m. It was given to us by the Anglo French marche and Old French marz, which of course was taken from the classical Latin Martius mensis, month of Mars, the Roman god of war, whose name you might recognize as a planet. I don’t know why they chose to name it after the god of war, although I find it especially interesting since the beginning of the Roman calendar used to begin in March. I guess wars are a good way to start the new year.

Now, like I said, the word March showed up in the early thirteenth century as it is now. Before the English decided to follow the calendar names used by the rest of Europe, they had another word for the month. It was hreðmonaÞ, which is pronounced “rethmonath”, with the first th pronounced soft, almost like a d and the second like the end of math. So yeah, we used to have another name for March. The monaÞ part obviously means month, but the hreð comes from either the word hreth, which means triumph (like the triumph over winter) or the Anglo-Saxon goddess Hretha.

And that’s March. Kind of an interesting one.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Omniglot

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

Fordham University

Utah Valley University

Encyclopedia Mythica

Old English-English Dictionary

Mental Floss

Briem.net