Talk:Calends

Solar kalends
The Romans assigned these kalends to the first day of the month, signifying the start of the new moon cycle[citation needed].

This line is confusing. If the Roman month was a month of the solar year, then how could the first day of a solar month signify "the start of the new moon cycle?" This is nonsensical, and obviously taken out of context from the original source.


 * This is easy to explain: the "kalends" is a term used traditionally in Solar calendar (i.e. the Julian one, since 45 BC onwards), but the information above refers to the pre-Julian lunar calendar, where "Kalendae" was the name of the day, when new moon should appear. 82.210.159.30 15:26, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Absurd
This term can be traced back to the Etruscans, which could explain the appearance of the letter k, a letter less favoured by Latin than the letter c (the few Latin words containing a k are often borrowed from the Etruscans).

This "explanation" is an obvious absurd - the "K" letter has nothing to do with Etruscans. The "appearance of the letter k" is simply one of few relics of older Latin ortography, before the reform made at the end of the 4-th century BC IIRC, which introduced the new letter G, and completely changed the older usage of C, K and Q. 82.210.159.30 15:26, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Whichever is correct, the article ought to be consistent. The article is Kalends, but the headword is "Calends". We should be using one or the other, not both (but also mentioning the other spelling). Hairy Dude (talk) 17:05, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

K vs C
At 00:04, 13 February 2008, anonymous 74.232.93.17 made the edit (replaced all instances of the incorrect "Kalends" with "Calends", since calends is spelt with a "C". Whoever grossly mispelt Calends should leave this site forever.) However, Kalends was traditionally spelled and abbreviated with a K. Since I don't have a source for this, I'm not going to unilaterally change it back. I'm hoping someone else has a source. --kundor (talk) 22:06, 24 February 2008 (UTC)


 * My Concise Oxford Dictionary, 9th edition, prefers the C spelling, notes the K spelling, and says "Middle English via Old French calendes from Latin kalendae, the first day of the month, when the order of days was proclaimed, from the base of Latin calare, Greek kalein ('call, proclaim')". On the basis of this source, I'm going to go ahead and move it to Calends, noting Kalends as an alternative spelling.  And on the subject of the rather dismissive edit summary from an anonymous IP user quoted above, I wish I could resist pointing out that s/he misspelt "mispelt", but I can't.  --  Ka renjc 16:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)


 * "Kalendae" should only be spelled with a K, I think...it looks extremely odd spelled with a C. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:41, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Funny verse
The rules for computation by Calends are included in the following verses: Prima Dies Mensis cujusque est dicta Calendæ: Sex Majus Nonas, October, Julius, et Mars; Quatuor at reliqui: Dabit Idus quilibet Octo. Inde Dies reliquos omnes dic esse Calendas; Quas retro numerans dices a Mense sequente.[1] '''After calculating this number, the pontiff would say something like: Quinque dies te calo, Juno novella. meaning: I invoke you, new Juno, for five days.'''

The phrase about "the pontiff" seems to suggest that the verse cited above is ancient and used by Roman pontiffs. This cannot be true, the verse is too rude (both grammatically and metrically) to be ancient. I am also in doubt about the suggested etymology. 193.0.99.100 (talk) 11:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible for someone to put up a translation of this? It doesn't seem terribly helpful as it is, as the "rules for computation" are not explained in the article and the casual reader is not likely to have a working knowledge of Latin. 125.238.45.133 (talk) 10:08, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The verse would not be ancient, because the Romans did not use the zero in counting. They would have counted the nones as seven days after the kalends in March, May, July and October, and as five days after the kalends in the other months (counting the kalends as day one rather than as day zero). Indeed, the nones takes its name from being the ninth (nona) day before the ides, because it falls eight days (by our reckoning) before the ides. The Romans also had an eight-day week which they called the nundinal (nine-day) cycle, because they understood it as a period of nine days (counting both the first and last day of the period). To this day, the Catholic Church refers to New Years Day as the "octave" of Christmas because it falls seven days after Christmas. The Roman adoption of the Julian calendar occurred only a year or so (less than one leap-year period) before the death of Caesar and the social upheaval precipitated by that event. Because the Julian calendar was devised by an Egyptian (not a Roman) astronomer, the new calendar's rules used the more familiar (to us) method of counting time periods beginning with the current unit as zero (instead of one, in the Roman fashion). As a result, during the anarchy that followed Caesar's death, the Roman priests in charge of keeping the calendar -- lacking training in the new method and not having seen the new calendar in use long enough for a leap year to have occurred -- applied the new rule book by adding a leap year every three years instead of every four years, because that is how they interpreted "every fourth year." The error was subsequently corrected in the Augustan period, but it results in chronology problems for the period immediately after Caesar's death.

Roman timekeeping and time-counting methods continued in use throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. Thus, I doubt the Latin verse could have been composed earlier than the widespread European adoption of the counting system embodied by Arabic numerals. The Reformation was a time of upheaval, so maybe post-Reformation? -- Bob (Bob99 (talk) 23:04, 11 February 2015 (UTC))

Etymology
I think that suggested etymology (from "calare") may be doubted on the ground that the term coined from that verb would sound "kalandae", and not "kalendae". At last, the rule forming gerundives is rather strict in Latin, and so it would seem that the term rather comes from "calere", as, by the way, suggested here and there, in publications newer than 18th century. 193.0.99.100 (talk) 11:23, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Article content
I wonder if some content could be added to make the article helpful to people who might hope to find practical guidance on reading dates written with the Kalends form? Unoquha (talk) 11:15, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, but we should link through to Roman calendar, which does. "Kalend form" involves the nones and ides as well. — Llywelyn II   03:49, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Kalends with a K
Despite the derivation of the word "calendar" in English, the original word Kalends is correctly spelled with a K, not a C. I'm not making this up; this is 3 and a half years of Latin talking! Please reinstate the correctly spelled Article instead of redirecting to "Calends" (sic). The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 05:11, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * This is the English Wikipedia and "calends" is one of two valid spellings in English, along with "kalends". You're thinking of the word "kalendae" in Latin. 160.176.83.211 (talk) 12:42, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Rituals
The article needs more coverage of the religious rituals at the kalends, apparently involving the pontifex minor, the rex sacrorum, and a sacrifice to Juno. — Llywelyn II   14:50, 10 August 2023 (UTC)