Arabic names of calendar months

The Arabic names of calendar months of the Gregorian calendar are usually phonetic Arabic pronunciations of the corresponding month names used in European languages. An exception is the Assyrian calendar used in Iraq and the Levant, which is inherited from Classical Arabic that correspond to roughly the same time of year.^[1]

The Gregorian calendar is and has been used in nearly all the countries of the Arab world, in many places long before European occupation of some of them . All Arab states use the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes. The names of the Gregorian months as used in Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen are widely regarded as standard across the Arab world , although the Syro-Mesopotamian names are often used alongside them . In other Arab countries some modification or actual changes in naming or pronunciation of months were observed. The names of the Gregorian calendar months in the different countries of the Arab world were as follows:

Levant and Mesopotamia

These names are used primarily in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. They are derived from the Syriac Aramaic names of the Assyrian calendar. These names are cognate with some of the names of the Babylonian and Hebrew calendars. Nine of these names were used in the Ottoman Rumi calendar, of which five remain in use in modern Turkish.

Egypt, Sudan, Persian Gulf countries

The names of the Gregorian months in Egypt, Sudan and the Persian Gulf states are based on the old Latin names.

Libya (1969–2011)

The names of months used in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya were derived from various sources, and were assembled after Muammar al-Gaddafi's seizure of power in 1969 and abolished in 2011 after the 17 February Revolution. The decision of changing calendar names was adopted in June 1986.^[2] Although the Libyan calendar followed the same sequence of the (renamed) Gregorian months, it counted the years from the death of the prophet Muhammad.^[3] This reckoning was therefore ten years behind the Solar Hijri calendar used in Afghanistan and Persia.

Algeria and Tunisia

The names of the Gregorian months in Algeria and Tunisia are based on the French names of the months, reflecting France's long colonisation of these countries (1830–1962 in Algeria; 1881–1956 in Tunisia). The original French names are therefore listed below.

Morocco

As Morocco was long part of the Roman Empire, the long-standing agricultural Berber calendar of the country preserves the Julian calendar and (in modified form) the names of its months. There are regional variations of the Berber calendar, since some communities did not recognise the Julian 29 February in century years where the Gregorian calendar had no equivalent date. When Morocco adopted the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes, the names of the months were taken from this local tradition.

References