Saturday, October 11, 2008

11 October or 11 December

I was going to post about a 9th Great grandmother, born a twin on 11 October 1641, but the family group sheet also shows them being born on 11 December. The better documented source looks like December is correct, but the discrepancy is based on some rational thinking. Most likely the original record didn't name the month but said something like born the 11th day of the 10th month of 1641. To us that seems like October. But if you think about the names of the months, you notice that Sept, Oct, Nov and Dec all sound like derivations from the latin for seven, eight, nine and ten. It turns out that in the 1600's, the first month of the year was not January, but March, which puts the last four months in the correct order with their names. So I'll wait till December to tell a story about Mary Allen.

1 comment:

Lloyd said...

If you look at the latin names for the months they are Sept =7Br,Oct =8Br, November = 9Br or gbr, Dec = 10Br/ We encounter these all the time in the extraction program especially with the german, latin names.