Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Stoney:

I originally stated that I did not see how the Jews returning from Babylon
adopted the Aramaic names for the months without it being an evidence that
returnees spoke Aramaic as their mother tongue. The reason I gave was that
people speaking the same language would tend not to change month names while
referring to the same calendar. Therefore, this could be evidence that
either the people spoke a different language, which I considered probable in
connection with other evidence, or they had a new calendar.

I didn’t expect the response.

So I clarified my statement indicating reasons that people would change the
month names, a) being the adoption of a different calendar than the one that
they had before, and with that different calendar, the names of that
calendar’s months, and b) language change, where I specifically mentioned
creolization. Now in your response, you mention a third option: changing
month names through royal decree, giving the example of Charlemagne.

Your description indicates that the English adoption was not the result of
language change through creolization, rather condition a) above, namely the
replacement of the old English calendar with the Latin calendar, and with
the Latin calendar came the Latin names of the months.

James mentioned the interesting situation where in Russia, the adoption of
the Latin calendar was accompanied by the adoption of the Latin names for
the months as well, while in the Ukraine, they simply shifted the old Slavic
month names over to the new calendar, so the adoption of a new calendar does
not always bring with it new month names. But that was not my objection in
the first place.

So my objection continues: while there are examples of replacement month
names to go along with a replacement calendar, or shifting old names over to
a replacement calendar, other than royal decree (which was only of limited
effect while apparently marking also a calendar substitution) are there any
examples of replacement names to go onto an unchanged calendar within an
unchanged language? I don’t know of any.

Karl W. Randolph.