mapsontheweb

‘November’ in European languages.

esoanem

What are the etyma for these? I’ve got:

  • Bright red: Latin november “ninth month” from its position in the year which, in the earliest Roman calendar began with March
  • Dark red: Old Irish samain, the name of a Gaelic festival often associated with Halloween, related either to English “same” or “Summer” (the former seems semantically more likely)
  • Brown: Finnish marras “death” + kuu “month” metaphorically the land dies for winter
  • Dark Green: Proto-Slavic *listopadъ from *lȋstъ “leaf” + *pàdati “to fall/be falling”, cf AmE “fall”, the name for the season after Summer
  • Light Green: from stȗd “cold”
  • Tan: from Arabic قَاسِم qāsim “divider” presumably a reference to seasonal division
  • Light Blue: from paya “straw” from Latin palea, this has me stumped
  • The Green in Sardinia: from Sant-Andria “Saint Andrew’s” after the Saint’s day at the end of the month
  • The Blue in Sardinia: from ognas “all” + santu “saint(s)” in reference to the feast day at the start of the month
  • The Green in Brittany and Cornwall: from common Brythonic *duβ “black”, presumably a reference to shortening days
  • The Green in Wales: from Middle Welsh tachwet “slaughtering”, apparently this was a time when animals were slaughtered

That leaves Basque, Lithuanian, and the various Saami and other Uralic ones that I couldn’t find an etymology for