Since the dawn of language, people have come up with a lot of different ways to talk about weather and the passage of time. A few of them are rational. Everything in the Chinese calendar is numbered, from yi yue (January, “one month”) to shi-er yue (“twelve month”). The Portuguese, a people who blew open the frontiers of the known world and scoured lands from Brazil to China in search of commercial profit, set Sunday, domingo, aside as the Lord’s day. But every single other day is named for the market day: segunda-feira, terça-feira, quarta-feira (second fair for Monday, third for Tuesday, fourth for Wednesday), et cetera.
More often, modern month names speak to how a culture’s ancient ancestors lived. This January, Muslims from Mecca to Stockholm will mark the month of Rajab, when fighting was forbidden in ancient Arabia. Next comes Sha’ban, “scattered,” the month when families would spread out to find what water they could before Ramadan, “burning heat.”