APRIL

A discussed etymology

Its name comes from the Latin Aprilis , which was the name given to this month by the Romains in the honor of the goddess Aphrodite or the Latin verb aperire (to open).

According to Ovide, Aprilis is dedicated to Venus: “Here are arrived to Us at the fourth month when you particularly are honoured: you know, Venus, that the poet and the month are with you. ” It initially justifies this attribution by the proximity with Mars (the month and the god) and the fact that Césars claimed to make go up their origins of their people with the goddess. He adds that “Quirinus always affirmed that Mars and Venus were his/her parents and he deserved to be believed; so that its descendants could not be unaware of it, it dedicated to the gods of its family two months successive. ”. Ovide justifies the Greek etymology ( Aphrodite ) of the month by the strong Greek presence in the Grande Greece .

Ovide challenges the other explanation by the verb aperire : “Which is not the claim of the envieux one? Some would like you to charm, O Venus, the patronage of this month and they jalousent you. As spring opens all things then and that the roughness of the cold is dissipated which tightened the ground, as the fertilized ground its center opens, they say that April ( aprilem ) is thus called because it is the good season when all is hatched ( aperto in time ), but good Venus puts the hand over this month and asserts it. ”.

The dictionary Gaffiot, after having raised its not very clear origin, brings closer aprilis to the adjective apricus (“talk with the sun, which likes the sun, sunny - clearly, pure”)

In the beginning, it was the second month of the Roman calendar. It was also the month per which (“ started; ouvrait ”) the year??.

April 1st

This beginning of the year (which translates the first complete month of the Printemps) survives through the pagan tradition of the Poisson of April, celebrated on April 1st. This popular celebration is related to the old determination of the festival of Easter which takes place first Sunday following first full moon of Printemps, and which practically always occurs in April in the Julien calendar of the orthodoxe Christians and the Semitic traditions (but place has at the end of March approximately a year on three with the Gregorian reformed calendar of the roman catholics and the nonorthodoxe Protestants).

Proverb : “ In April is not discovered a fil ; in May, do what it you plaît ; in June, you will dress yourself in a rien ”

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