Talk:Celtic calendar

"Celtic New Year" Factoid
The popular literature over the last century or so has given birth to the near universal assumption that Samhain, now associated with the Roman Catholic theme and folkways of Hallowe'en, was the "Celtic New Year". A number of sources including both the work of scholarly historians and Neopagan writers have begun to place this assertion under the microscope. In his exhaustive study of the folk calendar of the British Isles "Stations of the Sun"(Oxford University Press, 1996), the historian Ronald Hutton points out that there are no references earlier than the 18th century in either church or civic records which attest to this usage. Although it may be generally correct to refer to Samhain as "Summer's End", this point of descent into the year's darkness may need better proof for us to cite this "end" as also being a "beginning". On the other hand, there -is- a huge volume of proof of the western world, including late Celtia, as having begun their calendars either at the end of December, or around March 25th, at various periods back through and before Medieval times. (added to the main article 7/11/06 by Earrach)

Date of Coligny
" and dates to the 1st century, BC or AD, a time when the the Roman Empire imposed use of the Julian Calendar in Roman Gaul." well, which, BC or AD? I assume BC if it was Julian ...

no, man, the Julian calendar was in force until 1582, and longer. It's either just AD or just BC, we don't know. dab (&#5839;) 08:06, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Assuming the Julian calendar was imposed by Julius then it woud need to be BC (d. 15 March 44 BC) --Nantonos 21:44, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
 * the Julian calendar was continued being imposed for centuries. "Julian" is just the name. If the phrasing is unclear, please improve. dab (&#5839;) 05:54, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Which Calendar?
This article suffers from talking about three things at once without clearly separating them:
 * The Coligny (and Villards d'Heria) Gaulish calendars from the first century BC, a five year luni-solar calendar
 * The mediaeval Irish and Welsh calendars, a solar calendar with four quarterly festivals
 * The modern neopagan '8-fold wheel' calendar, dating from the 1960s, popularly and incorrectly supposed to be both ancient and Celtic.

There is actually a fourth missing section not discussed at all


 * Modern survivals of the mediaeval calendar, in Irish month names and in Scots law (pre 1990's reforms)

The solution would seem to be to split into sections and casrefully discuss each one and any links between them. --Nantonos 21:44, 18 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I know, that's the ultimate aim, of course. I just took the article as I found it and began to insert tidbits so far, but it needs a major revision. dab (&#5839;) 05:52, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Questioning section; Mediaeval Irish and Welsh Calendars
"' This observance of festivals beginning the evening before the festival day is still seen in the celebrations and folkloric practices among the Gaels, such as the traditions of Oíche Shamhna (Samhain Eve) among the Irish '"

I wish to question this statment for the reasons of linguistic structure and translation. It is important to note as mentioned in the following section of the statement of julius cesar, that gaelic cultures may have in history and do in modernday, consider the day to begin at nightfall and there fore celebration is NOT the evening BEFORE a festival. Proven or unproven it is misleasing to either to state so. Also, with regard to this it must be considered that there is no original grammar to distinguish Oíche Shamhna as either 'Night of Samhain' or Night before Samhain' in fact the most accurate thing to say is Samhain Night as to do otherwise would be placing an ancient concept into the syntax of an Caighdeán Oifigiúil and should be qualified as such. A qualifying standard may be to say, 'when applied within modern calander structures'??? The concept of the evening being the beginning of a festival has morphed in modern folklore to adjust to modern calanders, Ask any Irish person when Samhain is and they will say 31stOct and not 1stNov They dont mean the night of the 31st and the day of the 1st, they mean the 31st and only that calander day!!!....

You've sorta' got a point there but I think we're both going to get squashed by the steamroller of popular assumptions out there. In his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar says that the Gauls began their (...days, etc.)"at night". That's it. And from there all the assumptions and confusion have proceeded. In any of the several Latin translations I've checked Ceasar quite plainly does not say "from sunset-on". I've been lobbying for a long time that the main reason for this, perhaps unqualified, "jump" is due to a Bibliocentric historical scheme where the Celts (like everybody) were assumed to have descended, not from the trees, but from the landing-ramp of Noah's Ark... the "lost tribes" would no doubt measure their days using the semitic custom of measuring "from sunset-on". Nope,Ceasar just says the Gauls did it "at night" though; you know, possibly like some other culture I'm thinking of does it, say, perhaps even at 12:00AM. earrach -
 * Hi Emma, if you are considering removing or replacing sourced text, you need to have good, Verifiable sources to cite that prove the sourced text is somehow wrong or inaccurate. Having a personal disagreement with the sourced text is not sufficient.  ~ Kathryn NicDhàna  ♫ ♦ ♫ 02:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

A Guide to Irish Mythology,by Daragh Smyth Irish Academic Press; 2nd edition (July 1998)ISBN-10: 0716526123 gives the meaning of the phrase 'Oiche Shamana'which is literal and not influanced by any caighdeán."summers end night" would not be an unsupported meaning for the word. I dont believe the current text should be changed or deleted, just expanded to qualify it. It would also have continuity with the article on samhain here on wiki

Weasel words
The term Celtic calendar is used to refer to a variety of calendars used by Celtic-speaking peoples at different times in history.

I suggest:

The term Celtic calendar refers to a variety of calendars used by Celtic-speaking peoples at different times in history.

Calendaric terms
Ok I'm assuming good faith but could we agree on what we're trying to do in that list? The reason I was highlighting the samh in samhradh is because the -radh is a reduced form of ràth "season" and not part of the original root. As for the etymologies, not sure if Wiktionary is a good source. What source are we currently using, Pokorny? Akerbeltz (talk) 18:18, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no problem with any of your edits, but I notice User:Cagwinn has just reverted all of them. Can I ask why?
 * ~Asarlaí 18:34, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Many of the edits were unnecessary. To give a few examples, the removal the word "Native" from the section header "Native Calendar terms in Celtic languages" defeats the purpose of the table, which is to show native, non-borrowed Celtic calendrical terms; the removal of the term "24-hour period" from the "day" cell was unnecessary, as this is the definition of the root as found in Delemarre, et al.; laithe should not have been removed from the Irish column, as it is a genuine Old Irish form; many other entries were deleted for no good reason. Some edits were OK and can be restored, but it was easier to revert to an older version of the article than to try to disentangle the good edits form the bad. Cagwinn (talk) 21:33, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * So you were just being lazy? Gee thanks ;) Akerbeltz (talk) 21:37, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Cagwinn, I think it's best if we revert to this version and then you can re-add whatever you deem necessary. It might be good to make a new column for Old Irish and Old British/Old Welsh. However, those columns (along with Proto-Celtic and Gaulish) should be backed by references.
 * Also, I think it's fine to include borrowed terms if they're commonly used. ~Asarlaí 22:07, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That version is too messy and it contains errors - I think it would be better to start fresh from the version that is currently active. In all honesty, with too many more additions, the table is going to get completely out of control; I don't think it's even necessary to provide modern Irish, Scottish and Manx forms, unless they differ widely from the Old Irish; - similarly, Cornish and Breton forms could be combined into a single cell in many cases. I will try creating a new, cleaner table and post it here for approval.Cagwinn (talk) 23:04, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the modern terms should definitely be kept. This article is about the calendars/calendar-terms used by Celtic speakers throughout history, including today. ~Asarlaí 23:14, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, perhaps there should be a subsection for borrowed words?Cagwinn (talk) 23:31, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * There wouldn't be much to put in it though, other than the terms for "seven-day-week". ~Asarlaí 23:43, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * We could add the Latin-derived month names, as well, which are significant. There are also other time-keeping words derived from Latin (such ans Welsh prynhawn "afternoon").Cagwinn (talk) 23:49, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Some weekday-names and month-names are derived from Latin but some are derived from Proto-Celtic, so I'm not sure how we would lay that out. Could you show us what you've got in mind? ~Asarlaí 23:59, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I will mock something up in the next day or two and post it here. I am starting to think that the table format doesn't work very well for presenting all of this data (some of which needs some explanatory notes, not to mention multiple references).Cagwinn (talk) 00:39, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Update? ~Asarlaí 01:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * So I asked for an update from Cagwinn and waited for four days. As there was no reply (despite him being active) I re-added what I thought were the non-controversial changes (link). However, he has again reverted because it "wasn't constructive". Care to explain? ~Asarlaí 20:57, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I have been busy lately and have not had the time to sit down with all of my books to do proper source citations. Since you are so hot to edit this article, why don't you pick up the necessary books (most of which are cited in the Further Reading section) and do it properly, yourself??Cagwinn (talk) 23:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Sources for etymologies

 * As for the etymologies... I think we should be consistent. We can use more than one source, but there should be no mixing. For example if we give Source A and Source B for "year", we should give Source A and Source B for all the other terms. The etymologies should also be referenced using the tags.
 * ~Asarlaí 18:47, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I think I'll revert for now. How about Pokorny? Still a standard etym dict, he should have all the Celtic roots and there's an online version (the server is capricious though, needs a lot of patience.) Akerbeltz (talk) 19:38, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That looks fine, but I'm not sure how to use it (even after reading the instructions!). For example, how would I find the etymology for Irish bliain? ~Asarlaí 09:56, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It's capricious. I normally enter the term I'm looking for under "meaning", so if you search for "year" you get an alphabetic list where the bl- root should appear. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:31, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Please note that Pokorny's IEW, while still an excellent resource, is quite old now - a fair number of his etymologies have been rejected by scholars in the past 50 years.Cagwinn (talk) 13:47, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I know that but there's little else that's suitable for Celtic as reference. How about we use Pokorny for now and if there's any specific etymology that's been proven to be fishy, we/you find a ref and we clarify? Akerbeltz (talk) 14:07, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Little else?? There are plenty of resources available! For Irish we have the Lexique étymologique de l'irlandais ancien, for Welsh, the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru and the Etymological Glossary of Old Welsh, and for Gaulish the Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise, not to mention the newly-published Etymological Dictionary Of Proto-Celtic; there are also several important books in which etymologies for calendrical words can be found, such as Language and History in Early Britain, Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology, A Historical Phonology of Breton. There are probably hundreds of articles pertaining to this subject to be found in the various Celtic studies journals, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, Zeitschrift fuer Celtische Philologie, Etudes Celtiques, Studia Celtica, Ogam, et al.Cagwinn (talk) 23:07, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry I was being unclear. I meant online or in my library... Asarlaí doesn't seem to have copies either but since you seem to have easy access, i'd say my suggestion is viable - unless you're offering to get refs straight away? Akerbeltz (talk) 23:51, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, online sources would be preferable. We can use them for other articles too. If references are needed for Old Irish we can use EDIL (for a translation of an English word, click "advanced search", click "fielded options", choose "translation" and enter the word) and for Modern Irish we can use Focal. ~Asarlaí 14:20, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Why are online resources preferable?? I would hope that for my fellow editors, the highest quality resources would be preferable, regardless of their medium.

Well perhaps not preferrable in the sense that they're "better" but they're easier to use if you're not next to a Celtic department are have a staggering library of your own... I'm sure that's what he meant. Akerbeltz (talk) 19:18, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but if you do not have access to most of the sources that I mentioned earlier (many of which can be obtained through inter-library loan), you probably should leave the editing of Wiki's such as this to those of us who do.Cagwinn (talk) 21:53, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * No need to get shirty. I'm the first person to bow to better sources but could I suggest before you grumble about my access or lack thereof, to printed sources, you go and add a couple of refs yourself? It's been a long time since I was a university student or employee and at best, they'll let me use their reading library these days. Not all Celticists are stuck at uni, some of use work in the real world ;) (joke) Akerbeltz (talk) 00:14, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * No need to take offense - I was just being frank - no insult was intended. I am not a professional Celticist, but rather a serious hobbyist - I have a "real job" too. I already added several of the references that are currently listed in the article (Duval/Pinault, Delamarre, Lambert, & Koch) - I just haven't had the opportunity yet to link them to every specific entry in that table - but I will do so before the weekend is over.Cagwinn (talk) 01:56, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Week
If there's anyone actively watching this article, I have a request. Over in Week, I just removed the section on the Celtic Week, because it simply didn't make sense (it said that they had a 9 night, 8 day week, which clearly, doesn't add up)--you can see what I removed in this diff. If there is someone here who is familiar with this sources on this article, it would be great if you could write a one or two sentence summary of the Celtic Week (or multiple different weeks, if it wasn't the same over time/regions), along with one or two well-selected sources, it would be helpful. Thanks! Qwyrxian (talk) 23:40, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * There is indeed evidence for a 9-night week in use among the early medieval Irish and Welsh and this likely continues ancient, pre-Chritian timekeeping traditions. See: http://books.google.com/books?id=NsJNAxgtydYC&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82#v=onepage&q&f=false Cagwinn (talk) 23:53, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't understand--just mathematically speaking, how do you have 9 nights and 8 days? What happens to the extra day?  Do they have inter-calery days?  ....Okay, I just looked at the source, and it says 9 nights and 9 days.  Maybe then the only problem was the switch to 8 days.  I guess I'll re-add that info there with this citation. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:17, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, I can't, because you've made the change, and it still doesn't make sense, and doesn't match the source--that source doesn't seem to say anything about 8 days...Qwyrxian (talk) 00:18, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Irish on the table?
Just wondering why there is no Modern Irish in the table of calendar terms? There's Old and Middle Irish, as well as every other modern Celtic language, but no Irish. I could add it, being a native speaker, but I don't know how to edit a table. Any thoughts? Chippycavna (talk) 11:36, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

May Day
I'm not sure if the purpose of the table is simply to show similarities between languages, but otherwise it doesn't include Bealtaine (Irish) or Beltaine (Old Irish, various spellings) appears in some very old texts, and refers specifically to May Day - probably linguistically connected to Laa Boaldyn (Manx)?  Wasechun tashunka HOWLTRACK 20:41, 21 August 2017 (UTC)


 * It’s absolutely absurd to put Céideamhain as the Modern Irish for May. Céideamhain is a literary word at best (as seen in the actual dictionary entry if the ref linked directly to it—céideamhain, f. (gs. -mhna). Lit: May(-day)—and most people would have no idea what you meant by it.  Bealtaine is the modern word. ⚜ Moilleadóir ✍ 08:47, 20 May 2022 (UTC)