Did you know that, after parting ways with Garfunkel, folk artist Paul Simon recorded a Latin-rhythms-influence song named “Me and Julio Down by the School Yard”?
The irony, at least as far as we’re concerned, is quite thick. Perhaps Paul was a big fan of the month of July.
Regardless, learning the months of the year in Spanish is a critical part of mastering the language, and one of the best ways to do that is to take Spanish courses.
Let’s dive in!
The answer is pretty simple, just look at the table below. Remember that Spanish is a phonetic language so if you know how to sound each letter you should be able to read and pronounce the months in Spanish without trouble.
| ENGLISH | SPANISH |
| January | Enero |
| February | Febrero |
| March | Marzo |
| April | Abril |
| May | Mayo |
| June | Junio |
| July | Julio |
| August | Agosto |
| September | Septiembre |
| October | Octubre |
| November | Noviembre |
| December | Diciembre |
As you can notice, there are a few similarities between Spanish and English. This is no coincidence because the names for each month are derived from the Roman calendar and thus share the same Latin root.
The Spanish names of the months have their origin in Roman gods, emperors or numbers.
The Roman calendar originally contained only 10 months but it was then increased to 12 months imitating the Egyptians.
Through time, the Roman calendar suffered a few modifications, the most memorable being the creation of the Julian calendar.
This was then spread through the Roman Empire and across Europe, and used until the XV century when the Gregorian calendar appeared and was enforced by the Pope.
The Gregorian calendar is aligned with the solar year and is nowadays used in most parts of the world. That is why the months of the year are similar in different languages!
Example for January:
It was named after the God “Janus”.
Example for September:
The name comes from the Latin number “septem”, which means seven.
Nope! In English, according to the Spelling rules, the seven days of the week, the twelve months of the year, and most popular holidays such as Christmas and Easter fall in the category of proper names and therefore are capitalized.
However, this rule does not apply to Spanish.
Let’s look at ‘April’ and ‘Abril’, which hold a huge parallel between both languages:
The Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (Real Academia de la Lengua Española or RAE for its initials) explains, in the Diccionario prehispánico de dudas, that the months are always spelled without capital letters, with the following exceptions:
Example of capitalized months:
Let’s look at the Spanish seasons since you are learning about the months of the year. Here is a list of the four seasons in English and Spanish. It is easy to spot that in this instance there are no similarities like in the months of the year.
| ENGLISH | SPANISH |
| Spring | Primavera |
| Summer | Verano |
| Autumn | Otoño |
| Winter | Invierno |
When it comes to the four seasons written in English, they only need a capital letter when they are used as characters or are personified in poetry or children´s books for example; otherwise, seasons are spelled without capital letters.
Example:
In Spanish, the seasons are always spelled with lower caps, apart from for when they form part of a proper name of a festivity, a building, a street, a public space or a historic event.
Example:
The months in Spanish are always masculine and the seasons can be feminine or masculine.
Consequently, Spanish months and seasons require different articles:
Bear in mind that all individual names for the months of the year in Spanish are masculine.
In addition, the months standing as group (aka using the plural ‘meses’) or standing on their own (singular ‘mes’) are also masculine.
Simple to remember!
Most Castilian speaking countries, especially those who were conquered by Spain during colonial times, are still influenced by the Catholic Church and characters such as Saints, Popes, blessed sisters and brothers (such as “Diosdado” which directly translates to “Godgiven”), or even by entire chapters of the Bible.
Nonetheless, nowadays is very common to choose from all kinds of names for newborns!
A few months are used as proper names for girls and boys; and in some cases, they become feminine or masculine, in alignment to the gender of the person like Julia (girl) and Julio (boy) or Maya (girl) and Mayo (boy).
In any instance, they should always be capitalized!
Endearing names for baby girls:
Powerful names for boys:
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