10 July 2016

July

July is the 7th month in both the Julian and Gregorian calendar. It has 31 days, and is one of the hotter months of the year in the northern hemisphere. We are going to discuss a little about the naming of the month.

In the Roman calendar, there used to be only 10 months, and July was the fifth month. It was original named Quintilis, which is Latin for fifth. When the Roman calendar changed to a 12-month calendar, it retained the name Quintilis. We will see more of this later on when we talk about the final four months of the year.

In 45 BCE, when the Julian calendar was introduced, then Roman dictator Julius Caesar had the calendar created to follow more along the lines of the actual orbit of the Sun. When he was assassinated the following year, they renamed Quintilis Julius after Caesar, and it was anglicized to July.