The names for our months came from the Roman calendar.

March

The first month of the old Roman calendar

The school year began on March 24

The beginning of the old agricultural year when spring planting was done

The beginning of the fighting season which lasted until the autumn

Sacred to Mars, the Roman god of war

April

Name derived from the Latin word "aperio," meaning "to open"
Flowers and crops began to "open" during April

May

Named after Maia, the mother of Hermes (Mercury). Maia was the daughter of
Atlas who caught Zeus' roving eye
Considered an unlucky month for weddings

June

Named after Juno, the goddess in charge of marriage

Although the first half of the month was considered unlucky for weddings
because it contained several holy days dedicated to Vesta, we still consider June
a bridal month today.

July

Originally called Quintilis (the fifth month)

Later renamed for Julius Caesar who was born on July 13. Caesar's official
birthday celebration was moved to July 12 because July 13 was already sacred
to Apollo. This is the reason many sources give July 12 as his date of birth.
Today, we still have official birthdays, e.g., President's Day in February which
celebrates the birthdays of Lincoln (February 12) and Washington (February 22),
and Martin Luther King Day on the Monday in January following his real birthday.

August

Originally called Sextilis (the sixth month)

Renamed for Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor and adopted son of
Julius Caesar. He was by blood the grandson of Julius's sister.

September

Named the seventh month (from septem) since the Romans started counting with
March.

October

Named the eighth month (from octo)

November

Named the ninth month (from novem)

December

Named the tenth month (from decem)

Numa, the second king of Rome, is credited with adding two months to the Roman
calendar:

January, named after Janus, the two-faced god in charge of doorways, and
beginnings and endings, who looked backward and forward
February, named after a festival of purification held in that month

March was the month in which the new governmental officials took office. Our
presidents were inaugurated in March up to the middle of the twentieth century. We also
used to pay our taxes on March 15, the day on which Caesar was assassinated. The
Ides of March was a day everybody knew, and even in Rome, debts had to be paid by
the Ides of the month.
The ex-officials left in March to head up the armies. However, by the middle of the
second century B.C., they had to travel so far to reach the front lines that it sometimes
took them two to three months to reach those armies. The campaigning season was
half over! Therefore, in 154 BC, the Romans changed the beginning of their year to
January. The new officials were inaugurated on January 1, which gave the ex-officials
more time to travel to the provinces and allowed them to make use of the good weather
to fight their battles.
In 46 BC, Julius Caesar reformed the calendar with the help of an Egyptian astronomer
named Sosigenes. The calendar was originally a lunar one and was constantly going
out of sync with the solar year. Caesar is the one who set the number of days for each
month, including 28 for February, and inaugurated the leap year to occur every four
years with the extra day to come in February. The Romans did it a little bit differently
from the way we do, however. They repeated the day of February 24 in a leap year.
Who said you can never live a day over again!!!

The calendar we use today is one of the more obvious and pervasive ways Rome still
influences our lives 2000 years later.