Why do the months of our calendars have names which do not match their numbers?

Why do the months of our calendars have names which do not match their numbers. Like October .. Oct Means 8 but october isnt the 10th month. and december .. dec means 10 and december is the 12th month. Please Help Explain? thanks a bunch!Why do the months of our calendars have names which do not match their numbers?
The year used to begin at the vernal equinox in March. So March was the first month, December was the 10th month, January the 11th, and February the 12th.Why do the months of our calendars have names which do not match their numbers?
The Romans were a warring culture (they just loved going to war and conquer the world).





Mars was the god of War. Therefore, the calendar would begin with the time of year that was best to get the armies going (before that, the roads were too muddy and the weather too miserable for military camps).





April (from a Latin verb meaning to open: the flowers were opening)


Maius (the month dedicated to the goddess Maia, our mother Earth)


Junius (dedicated to Juno, wife of Jupiter and goddess of marriage -- among other things).


Then the rest of the months were numbered:


Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December.





By December, if the armies had not returned, they were (literally) stuck in mud somewhere. War was no longer possible. The rest of the time did not count and, for a long time, there were simply no winter months.





The old timers (sticklers for tradition and old religious practices) still celebrated the new year around the date of the Winter Solstice. This practice was very old in the northern hemisphere (evidence that it was so almost 10,000 years ago, was found near Stonehenge).





So the ';religious'; months of Januarius and Februarius were used to fill in the gap (Janus, the god of doors, had two faces to see who was coming and going; he was a natural to look towards the future and towards the past) (Februarius gives us the word fever -- sickness was probably common at that time of the year).





It is Iulius Caesar (most of you know him as Julius) who reformed the calendar and formally added these two months.





The year still started in March (month of Mars). Months had 31-30-31-30-31-30... days, except February who only kept its 30th dayon leap years (29 days otherwise).





When Julius died, they named the 5th month after him. We call it July.





When his grand son (adopted) became emperor, he was, let us say, full of himself. He had proclaimed himself ';Augustus'; from a Latin word meaning ';deserving of veneration and respect';.





He proclaimed that a month should be named after himself (he picked the 6th). Then he insisted that it too should have 31 days just like Julius's.


Who paid for this extra day? Poor February (the last month of the year). The sequence of 31-30 was rearranged to the ';end'; of the year, without touching January (the military leaders still did not care much about these useless months).





When the Church tried to erase the Roman (and other pagan) celebrations, it tried to have the year begin on various dates.





We finally ended up with January 1st, making the 7th month... the 9th.
The names of the months have origins in mythology and such. As one poster pointed out July is named for Julius Cesar. September through December are named for numbers : 7-8-9-10. Those numbers were used because June was the 4th month in the Roman Calendar.





David


http://quantummechanicsdemystified.blogs鈥?/a>
Most of the months were named when they were part of the Roman calendar, which only had 10 months in it.





September, October, November and December were originally the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th months, respectively.
July and August were inserted into the Roman calendar to commemorate Julius and Augustus Caesar, respectively. An extra day was stolen from February so that August could have the same number of days as July, so Augustus Caesar wouldn't be snubbed in the new calendar.
January is named after JANUS, the god with two faces -- one looking forward (to the new year) and one looking backward (to the old year).





Check this website:


http://www.crowl.org/Lawrence/time/month鈥?/a>
The Romans revised the calendar, which originally had ten months, by adding two new months, January and February.