Month Portraits: Hartung, Hornung, Gilbhart and the Other German Month Names

Anyone looking up the meaning of a single German month name soon meets a series that looks closed and coherent: Hartung, Hornung, Lenzing, Ostermonat, Wonnemonat, Brachet, Heuert, Ernting, Scheiding, Gilbhart, Nebelung, Julmond. That is how it stands in the Duden today, and that is how it travels through calendar pages and forums, usually labelled "Germanic".[1]

The series does not survive examination. It consists of two very different layers, and some of its names are not a thousand years old but a good hundred. This article takes each name on its own: what it means, where it first appears, who invented it where that applies, and which Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse names stand beside it. How the calendar works as a system, with its crescent, leap month and winter solstice, is set out in the Germanic lunar calendar; the series of thirteen reconstructed lunar months is surveyed in the lexicon of Germanic month names.

The thirteen portraits at a glance

• Hartung – January, first lunar month
• Hornung – February, second lunar month
• Lenzing – March, third lunar month
• Ostermonat – April, fourth lunar month
• Wonnemonat – May, fifth lunar month
• Brachet – June, sixth lunar month
• Heuert – July, seventh lunar month
• The leap moon – the thirteenth, a summer insertion
• Ernting – August, eighth lunar month
• Scheiding – September, ninth lunar month
• Gilbhart – October, tenth lunar month
• Nebelung – November, eleventh lunar month
• Julmond – December, twelfth lunar month

A preliminary note on the ending. Whether a month ends in "-monat" or "-mond" makes no difference to its meaning. According to Heinrich Heeger, "Mond" only takes the place of "Monat" towards the end of the Middle Ages.[7] In terms of language history a month is a moon in any case: Proto-Germanic mēnōþ is a direct derivation from mēnō.[13]

Hartung: the hard month

January is called Wintarmanoth or Hartimanoth in Old High German, winter month or hardness month, because it is the coldest and hardest month of the year.[3] The Hartmond also points to the hard ice of this season.

The spelling Hartung current today is recent. Hermann von Pfister-Schwaighusen coined it in 1893 by reshaping "Hartman", compounded from the hard earth and Man for moon.[5] Anyone writing "Hartung" is therefore using a 19th-century name for a concept whose core is genuinely old.

One distinction causes a great deal of confusion and is worth stating plainly: the original winter month in the sense of winter's beginning is not this month but the tenth lunar month, see Gilbhart.[1]

Among the Angles the month bore the name (æftera) jéola, "later Yule", which matches the Icelandic jólmánaðr: here the name of the festival has passed to the month.[2] A further Icelandic name, hrútmánuðr, derives from hrútr, ram or wether, possibly an allusion to the Yule goat. The Danish-Scanian names Renden (reindeer month) and Glugmåned (wind month) fit the same picture of hard winter.[10]

Hornung: the one who came off short

Hornung is the best attested and at the same time the most surprising name in the series. It stands already in Einhard and goes back to Old and Middle High German hornunc.[3] Its meaning has nothing to do with the horns of animals: the Germanic word hurna means horn, point, corner, and hornunc denotes "the child begotten in the corner", the bastard, the one who came off short. In Old Norse too, hornung is the illegitimate child.[1]

What is meant is February as the month that turned out too short, counting only 28 or 29 days in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. From this follows an argument that bears on the whole calendar: in a true lunar calendar, whose months run alternately 29 or 30 days and are therefore essentially equal in length, such a name cannot arise.[1] Hornung belongs to Julian reckoning, not to lunar.

Bede calls the second lunar month solmónað.[2] The name probably means "mud month" or "wallow month", from Old English solu, wallow, puddle, mire, related to the modern German Suhle. Bede reports that in this month the Angles offered cakes to their gods. Zautner cautions that this may reflect Roman custom that had reached England, since February was the month of the parentalia, the Roman commemoration of ancestors, observed with baked soul-breads.[1]

A German name fits this semantically: Sprokelmonat, Sporkelmonat or Sporkele. It is said to be named after a female mythical figure, the Spurkele or Frau Spörkelse, whose name means the leaping, the bursting one, because she makes the winter ice burst as the sun does. She is said to wear seven smocks, each longer than the last; she shakes these smocks and so produces the winds of February.[1]

The Alemannic-Bavarian Rebmonat derives from the dialect verb räbeln, to stir, to make a racket: beneath the ice things begin to move. The Low German Wiwermônd or Ollewîwermônd, old-women's month, alludes to the women's processions at carnival, and popular saying holds that the women are the weather-regents of February. A further Anglian name, fillibrook, means the time when the rivers fill.[1]

Taken together this points to a month associated with the onset of the thaw. In Scandinavia, where the thaw takes longer to arrive, the month is instead called þorri (Norwegian Torre, Swedish Thorre), a mythical name for a winter giant; þorri means frosty drought. Its full moon originally carried the Þorrablót.

Lenzing: not really a month name at all

The usual designation for March today is Lenzing. Lenz and its variants Lenzmonat, Lenzmond and Lenzing derive from Old High German lenzo or lengzo, or from Germanic langat-tin, and refer to the lengthening days.[1] Einhard transmits Lentzinmanoth.[3]

Zautner records an objection that is rarely read: today the Lenz always denotes the whole three-month spring season. In the strict sense Lenzing is therefore not a month name at all but a synonym for spring, and in that sense probably a younger coinage.[1]

Bede calls the third lunar month hréðmónað and connects it with a goddess Hreða.[2] Etymologically she is hard to interpret. Her name might belong to Old English hréð, quick or swift, or to that hréð- which appears as a name element in hréðgotan and hréðcyning and resists interpretation.[8] The Appenzell Chronicle has the form redmanot; Weinhold derives the name from Old High German hradi/redi and thereby draws a connection to räbeln and "to stir".[11] Later Anglo-Saxon attests hlŷdmónað, the "month of loudly roaring torrents".

In Scandinavia the month is called gói. Góa was probably a fertility deity, in legend the daughter of the mythical king Þórri; her name recalls the North German Frau Gaue and the Scanian Frau Gyja, a weather and snow goddess. Etymologically it is said to derive from giwên/gewôn, the thawing, the opening one.[1] In this month Sweden celebrated the Disting, a feast honouring the Dísir, who appear in the First Merseburg Charm as Idisi. Danish and Swedish also know thurrmånad, the month in which things become dry again, which folk etymology later reinterpreted as belonging to the thunder god Thor: Tormåned.[10]

Ostermonat: the most constant name

The fourth month carries the same name across the centuries and across language borders. Einhard has Ostarmanoth, Bede eosturmónað: the Old High German and the Old English forms agree.[3][2] Ostermonat is thus the most stable name in the whole series and one of the few the 19th century found nothing to improve.

Bede names Eostre as a pagan spring goddess to whom a feast was dedicated in this month. Caution is needed here. From the German month name and Bede's note, Jacob Grimm reconstructed the goddess name Ostara, which Zautner calls "somewhat misbegotten"; Ostra or Proto-Germanic *Austrô would be more accurate. Whether the goddess Bede names was really venerated remains disputed: a pan-Germanic or German Eostre is held to be largely improbable, while the reading of Old English Eostre as the byname of a goddess venerated in eastern Kent is still maintained.[8]

A quite different derivation of the word Easter draws on Polabian, Kashubian and Sorbian evidence alongside the Germanic and assigns it to the word family around the verb osen, Middle Low German for to draw or pour water. Taken together this would yield an initially pagan feast, later adapted by Christianity, involving a blessing of water.[9]

Calendrically this month is a pivot. Its full moon opens summer in the bipartite Germanic year, Sumarmál. Setting aside the modern shift to Sunday, Easter still mostly falls on the pagan date Bede transmits.[1] The Icelandic name einmánuðr remains uncertain; it probably means simply "one month" or "first month", though a counterpart to the doubled tvímanuðr, the twin-month of the leap year, is also conceivable.

Wonnemonat: the bliss is a pasture

The Wonnemonat or Wonnemond was Old High German winni- or wunnimanod, Middle High German wunne- or winnemanot, and Einhard transmits Winnemanoth.[3] The name can mean two things: pasture month and month of joy. The underlying terms wunni (joy, delight) and wunne (pleasure ground, pasture) go back to Gothic winja (pasture, fodder) and Germanic wunjo.[1] The modern "bliss" of May is therefore originally a pasture. In Swabia the name Lustmonat was used alongside it.

Bede calls the month þrimilchi, because the cows were now milked three times a day.[2] After a long winter the cattle could finally go out to pasture, and the milk yield rose sharply. Bede further records that fertility was especially high in this season and that this was probably acknowledged in cult as well.

Snorri calls the month gaukmánuðr and sáðtíð, month of the cuckoo and time of sowing. Into it fell lögarðsönn, the point at which one staked out the legal boundaries of one's farm. In Danish the fifth month was simply sommermaen.[10]

Brachet: the resting field

The German name for June is Brachet, the South German short form of Brachmonat or Brachmond. It names a task: under the three-field system the fallow field was worked in this month.[1] Einhard has Brachmanoth, so the name belongs to the old core.[3]

Bede calls both the sixth and the seventh month líða.[2] Líða means "gentle" or "navigable": the sea now lay smooth and could be sailed.[4] A further Anglian name, sere- or seármónað, means dry, parched, hot month and fits the fallow month.

In Icelandic the sixth lunar month is called, after Snorri, eggtíð and stekktíð, the time of eggs and the time for roasting meat; the month after the summer solstice bears the name sólmánuðr, month of the sun.[1] Iceland bound the date of the Althing to the summer solstice. Behind this stood an idea that lasted a long time: that law may be spoken only by day and only in the sunniest season. As late as the 18th century the Swiss Landsgemeinden still asked "whether the sun stands high enough that it be time to judge over blood".[1]

Heuert: the winter fodder

The seventh month was devoted throughout the Germanic area to bringing in the winter fodder. Named after the hay harvest, it was called hewimanoth in German lands, Heuvimanoth in Einhard, Danish hoemaen.[3] Heuert is the shortened later form. Alongside líða the Angles also knew mædmónað, the mowing month; Icelandic has heyannir, the hay works.[2]

One Danish name stands out from the series: ormemåned, snake or rather adder month.[10]

Calendrically this month carries the old midsummer. According to the Primstav it lay here because this full moon stands in the year-wheel exactly opposite the full moon of the Yule and midwinter feast in the first lunar month.[1] Hence Old Icelandic also knows the name miðsumar for this month.

The leap moon: the thirteenth that is not always there

Between the hay moon and the harvest moon a thirteenth month can stand, one missing from the German series because that series follows the Julian division into twelve. Bede attests the term þrilíða, the "Three-Líða year", that is, a year with three Líða moons.[2] In Old Norse it is aukamánaðr or aukatungl, the additional month, the additional moon; Wormius has Danish sildemæn, the late month.[10]

That the insertion falls in summer rather than in the dark of winter is Zautner's reconstruction and no longer Bede's wording: Bede's testimony does not settle the exact position.[1] The summer insertion keeps the midsummer date cleanly within the seventh month. Why this works astronomically is set out in the Germanic lunar calendar.

Ernting: corn and weed

Erntemonat and Erntemond go back to Old High German arnoti from ar(a)n, the old word for harvest, and point to the grain harvest. Einhard has Aranmanoth.[3] The form Ernting, by contrast, was coined by Adolf Reinecke only in 1893.[6]

A note on the history of reconstruction belongs here. When the jurist Justus Friedrich Runde attempted in 1781 to reconstruct a German series of month names from Einhard and Bede, he more or less removed Charlemagne's arbitrary interventions but posited an "Ährenmonat", an ear-of-corn month. That is wrong, because aran is the old form for harvest, not for ear.[7]

Bede calls the eighth lunar month weodmónað, the month of the weed.[2] In the north stand kornskurðarmánuðr (Icelandic) or kornmaen (Danish), the month of the corn cutting, and Swedish skördemånad, the reaping month: grain harvest and haymaking ran into one another.[1]

Scheiding: a new coinage with a false etymology

Herbstmonat and Herbstmond derive from the word Herbst, which, like English harvest to this day, originally means harvest.[1] For September Einhard has Witumanoth, the wood month, which Zautner counts among the arbitrarily assigned names: chopping wood is possible in any season.[3] The form Herbsting again comes from Adolf Reinecke, 1893.[6]

Scheiding is readily explained as the month that divides the warm from the cold season. That is how Pfister-Schwaighusen introduced it in 1893. Zautner objects that it is a new formation from Northumbrian skeadhing and that the name was therefore arbitrarily inserted.[5] The widespread explanation is thus an after-the-fact rationalisation of a newly made word.

Among the Angles this last month of summer was called haligmonað, holy month; Bede calls it a "month of offerings" without naming any details of the rite.[2] Alongside it they knew hærfestmónað. Icelandic has haustmánuðr, autumn month. The haustblót, the autumn offering, however falls on the full moon of the tenth month, not this one. In Danish the ninth month bears the name fiskemåned, fishing month, while höstmåned there already falls on the eighth.[10]

Gilbhart: plucked out of thin air

No name in the series rests on thinner ground. Gilbhart is a New High German coinage from gilb, the yellow autumn foliage, and Hart, the upland forest that survives in place names such as Spessart (woodpecker forest).[1] Hermann von Pfister-Schwaighusen introduced it in 1893. The Germanist Otto Brenner judged in 1900 that the name was "arbitrarily plucked out of thin air".[5]

What is attested early for October is something else: Einhard has Windumemanoth.[3] The name goes back to Latin vinum (wine) and demere (to take off), so it means the wine-harvest month, later shortened to Weinmonat or Weinmond. The Angles too knew winmónað regionally. A linguistic subtlety matters here for the north: in the Germanic language area, wine-berries also denoted currants and blueberries, as Swedish vinbär still shows. Since there were no grapes in northern latitudes, a reading as the currant or blueberry gathering month is equally conceivable. The same applies, incidentally, to Vinland, the Viking name for Newfoundland.[1]

The most important finding for this month, however, stands in Bede, and it concerns the start of winter. The Angles called it winterfylleth, which Bede explains as the winter full moon: with the full moon of this month, winter begins.[2] A feast at this full moon would correspond in time to the Scandinavian Winter Nights (vetrnætr), which likewise mark the beginning of winter. The German Realglossare too use the designation Wintermonat for the tenth lunar month, so that a beginning of winter in this month may be assumed for that region as well.[1] Anyone searching for the "winter month", then, will find it here and not in January.

The Windmonat goes back by folk etymology to the "little wine month" and is used for the tenth or eleventh month. Danish has Sædemaen, the month of autumn sowing.[10]

Nebelung: a translation from the French

November is blótmonað in Bede.[2] The name goes back to Old English blótan, to sacrifice and to slaughter, corresponding to Old High German bluozan. The New High German designation would accordingly have to be *Blozmonat.[1] November was the traditional slaughtering season throughout the Germanic area, and there are indications that the Angles in particular regarded slaughter as a sacred matter and consecrated the animals to be killed as offerings.

The German-speaking area knows Schlachtmonat alongside this, Swedish blotmånad and slaktmånad (there, however, for October), Danish slagtemåned, Dutch slachtmaand. The Icelandic gormánuðr fits semantically: Norwegian and Old Swedish gor, Old Danish gur denotes the contents of the entrails drawn at slaughter. The Danish designation pølsemaen, sausage month, from the thirteen-month calendar of Olaus Wormius, agrees with this, since sausages are nothing other than intestines filled with meat.[10] For Zautner it is precisely this mundane name that argues against a great slaughter feast.[1]

Nebelung has nothing to do with any of this. Nebelmonat and Nebelmond point to the fog of the season, and the Nebelung was invented by Pfister-Schwaighusen in 1893.[5] Zautner records that it is merely a translation of the French brumaire, the fog month of the revolutionary calendar.[1] A name that passes as Germanic thus comes from republican France.

In Old High German the designations Herbistmanoth, Wintermanoth and Windmonat are found for November, though these names were partly used for September and October as well. Einhard has Herbistmanoth for November.[3]

Julmond: a loan from Swedish

Among the Angles the last month of the year was the early Yule month, Old English ærra jéola.[2] Into it fall the winter solstice and the Mothers' Night (Modranecht), and, after the pagan lunar Yule feast was moved to the day of Christ's birth, which Hákon the Good attests for Scandinavia among others, the Christian feast of Christmas as well. So even in Christian times geohholmónaþ and Old Norse jólmánuðr denoted December as the month of the Christmas feast.[12]

The modern German Julmond, by contrast, is recent and borrowed: it comes from Swedish, where Jul means Christmas, and was introduced among the gymnasts in 1846 by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn as the twelfth month.[7] The modern term Jul itself goes back to Old Norse jól. For December Einhard still has Heilagmanoth, the holy month.[3]

What remains of the series

Set the twelve names of the Duden series beside Einhard's list and the picture sorts itself out. From the old stock come Hornung, Ostermonat, Wonnemonat, Brachet and Heuert; they stand in the 9th century and remained in use in German dialects into the 16th to 18th centuries.[4] Newly formed or reshaped, by contrast, are Hartung, Ernting, Scheiding, Gilbhart and Nebelung, all in 1893, together with Julmond in 1846 and Lenzing, which at its core is a word for the season.[5][6][7]

This does not devalue the young names as language. It merely places them correctly: they show a romantic relationship to rural life close to nature, as Zautner puts it, and not the time-reckoning of the Germanic peoples.[1] Anyone looking for the calendar itself will find it in Bede and in the Old Norse names, and there the count runs not in twelve Julian months but in thirteen moons.

Which lunar month is currently running depends on the moon and shifts every year. The Ártala app works out the date: it shows the current lunar month with its attested name, the inserted leap month and the festivals bound to the full moons, source-based and free of advertising. Available as a web app, for Android and for iOS at Ártala – the Germanic lunar calendar.

Sources

• Bede, De temporum ratione, ch. 15 ("De mensibus Anglorum", c. 725) – Anglo-Saxon month names, start of winter at the winterfylleth full moon, þrilíða leap year.
• Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ch. 29 (9th c.) – the twelve Old High German month names of Charlemagne.
• Andreas E. Zautner, Der gebundene Mondkalender der Germanen, Edition Roter Drache – chapter "Die Monatsnamen im Einzelnen"; dating and critique of the New High German series.
• Jean-Pierre Poirier, The Names of the Months in Europe: Agricultural and Meteorological Influences, European Review 15/2 (2007), pp. 199–207.
• Philip A. Shaw, Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World (2011) – on the evidence for Eostre and Hreða.
• Jürgen Udolph (2011) – on the osen derivation of Easter.