October was originally the eighth month.
Octagon, octopus… most words that begin with the Latin prefix “Oct” have some connection to the number eight. But what about October? While the modern calendar considers the autumn month to be the 10th of the year, it wasn’t always that way. For the ancient Romans, who created the earliest form of the calendar we use now, October was originally the eighth month.
Today’s calendar follows a 12-month cycle, though the earliest iterations only had 10 months. In ancient Rome, the year began in March and ran through December, with the first four months named for Roman deities. The next six months had more straightforward, numerical names that referenced their place in the year. The remaining weeks of winter (which would eventually become January and February) were largely ignored on paper; when the harvest season ended, so did the calendar, until the next spring planting season rolled around.
Over time, the calendar expanded by two months; January and February were added around 700 BCE, and by about the middle of the fifth century BCE, they had become the starting months of the year. When Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar, he didn’t adjust the number-named months to more appropriate places, though later Roman emperors tried, using names that didn’t stick. Domitian, who ruled from 81 to 96 CE, called October “Domitianus” after himself, and decades later, Commodus dubbed the month “Herculeus” after one of his own titles. Some historians believe the attempts to rename October (and the other months of the year) were widely disregarded because the leaders themselves were generally disliked, though another theory might explain it best: Like many people today, Romans of the past just weren’t fans of change.
Eager trick-or-treaters counting down to Halloween know October has 31 days, though there was a time in history when the month ran 10 days short. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar, an upgrade from the Julian calendar that had fallen 10 days out of sync and was thus messing with the timing of religious holidays. Switching to the new calendar fixed the issue, but it required a one-time drop of 10 days to get back on track. The pope decreed the calendar would skip them in October, the month with the fewest holy days. After October 4, the calendar jumped to October 15, omitting the days in between and causing a flurry of issues: Some citizens in Frankfurt rioted against the change, many countries delayed or refused to swap to the new calendar, and participating regions had to recalculate rents and wages for the shortened month. Over the next few centuries, most countries around the globe adopted the Gregorian calendar, though some held out longer than others. Greece became the last European country to officially adopt the calendar, in 1923.
