Most of us live by our calendars to keep our schedules straight.
But did you know the calendar has astronomical origins?
While the constellations were, largely, created to help people remember significant star patterns, they have plenty of other uses. One of these is for the formation of the calendar.
Seeing stars
Many cultures use or used the skies to keep track of the time of year.
For example, the ancient Egyptians watched out for the star Sopdet, which is known as Sirius in Canada today. They knew that each year when they would spot Sopdet rising, the annual Nile floods would soon be upon them.
This important information would affect their lives greatly. The same was true for many people around the world.
The origins of the calendar
Different versions of the calendar were created by civilizations all over the world. However, the one internationally recognized today is of Roman lineage.
Months
The ancient Romans created a 12-month calendar based on the lunar months, which started in what we call March.
The names of the ancient Roman months are as follows:
Original name | Meaning |
Martius | Mars’ month (god of war) |
Aprilis | Aphrodite’s month (known as Venus, also the Goddess of love and beauty) |
Maius | Maia’s month (goddess of spring) |
Junius | Juno’s month (head Goddess and Jupiter’s wife) |
Quintilis | Fifth month |
Sextilis | Sixth month |
September | Seventh month |
October | Eighth month |
November | Ninth month |
December | Tenth month |
As you can see, this version is missing two months. Around 700 BCE, Januarius and Februa were added. Januarius is for the god of gates, and Februarius represents Februa, the month when the Roman purity celebration was held.
Almost 550 years later, the start date of the year was officially changed from Martius to Januarius, as Janus was seen as the god of beginnings.
In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar changed the calendar. By this time, his astronomers knew that a year was 365 ¼ days long. When Caesar was assassinated, he was honoured by having the month Quintillis replaced by his name, July. Years later, the month Sextilis took on Ceasar Augustus’ name, as August.
Weeks
Most sources suggest the origin of the week comes from an ancient Jewish tradition commencing from between the 6th to the 9th centuries BCE.
The repeating 7-day cycle became widespread in ancient Persia, Greece, and Rome.
Days
The origin of the day has the most complex background.
The origins of the day are connected to the belief that a planet ruled each hour of the day. The day was named for the planet that ruled at sunrise.
In ancient times, the sun and the moon were considered to be planets. Therefore at this time, the known planets were Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury and the moon.
Saturn began by ruling the first hour of daytime on Saturday. If you go through each hour from then onwards representing the planets in the order above, you get 24 hours with different planets ruling them on Saturday.
As you can see, when they ran out of planets, they started over again. The days were then named for the planet that ruled at sunrise.
If we continue this pattern, we get the following planets ruling the day at sunrise:
Day | Ruling planet | English name origin |
Saturday | Saturn | Saturn’s day |
Sunday | Sun | Sun day |
Monday | Moon | Moon day |
Tuesday | Mars | Tyre’s day (Tyre was the Norse god of war – equivalent to the Roman god “Mars”) |
Wednesday | Mercury | Wodan’s day (Wodan is also known as Odin) |
Thursday | Jupiter | Thor’s day (Thor was the Norse god equivalent of the Roman Jupiter) |
Friday | Venus | Frigg’s day (Frigg was the Norse goddess equivalent of the Roman Venus) |
The lunar calendar on a turtle’s back
Many Indigenous teachings, including those of the Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee people, use the back of a turtle’s shell as a lunar calendar.
Depending on how we measure a lunar month, the moon goes around the Earth in approximately 28 days. This means that in one year (365 days), the moon goes around 13 times, giving us 13 lunar months with 28 days each.
Conveniently, if we examine a turtle’s shell, we find the same pattern of numbers of lunar months in a year and days in a lunar month:
For more information on the turtle shell lunar calendar, please refer to this resource.