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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

In Polish months are named after plants that bloom then and weather conditions. Quite poetic to say "I will meet you on the 5th day in the month of linden trees" :)

The funny thing is that other Slavic countries use similar names but some are moved 1 month back or forth because flowers bloom earlier/later there :)

And days of the week are simply numered starting with sunday = "niedziela" (not working day), "poniedziałek" (after not working day), "wtorek" (secondary day), "środa" (middle day), "czwartek" (fourth day), "piątek" (fifth day) and "sobota" (sabbath).

I never remember the names of the roman months and have to count them starting from january.

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In Slovenia we used to have the old Slavic names for months, but somewhere around my or my parent’s generation they completely died in favor of roman months.

My grandpa is still fluent in them, my parents knew about them and probably knew how to use them once upon a time, I know them as something you see on very old calendars and a curiosity we learned about in kindergarten.

All I remember is that my birthday month, October, is called listopad because it’s when leaves fall down

That's the thing with moving the months back and forth :), in Poland listopad is November, and October is październik (comes from paździerz (chaff?) - the husks of grains separated by threshing it).

Actually you know what, I messed it up. Listopad is November. October is vinotoč because it's when young wine turns into real wine.

Just goes to show how little this stuff is used nowadays :D

Although wikipedia[1] says that listopad is an alternative name for October. I am now sufficiently confused.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_months

Interesting. So my grandmother's maiden name "wrzesień" has a meaning beyond "September" (according to Polish-English translations)?

I don't know for a fact it had the accent over the last letter. Records here in the US exclude it, of course that hardly means it wasn't there originally.

The word is derived from "wrzos" = heather.

wrzos (heather) is a plant that blooms in early autumn, hence the name wrzesień.

Also it's not accent, it's softening of the n sound, similar to Spanish n with ~.

Yes I should have said, "diacritic"

Ancient Greek month names usually identify a holiday that happens that month. The question of how different cultures name the months is interesting in its own right.

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