Talk:Calends

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[edit] Solar kalends

The Romans assigned these kalends to the first day of the month, signifying the start of the new moon cycle[citation needed].

This line is confusing. If the Roman month was a month of the solar year, then how could the first day of a solar month signify "the start of the new moon cycle?" This is nonsensical, and obviously taken out of context from the original source.

This is easy to explain: the "kalends" is a term used traditionally in Solar calendar (i.e. the Julian one, since 45 BC onwards), but the information above refers to the pre-Julian lunar calendar, where "Kalendae" was the name of the day, when new moon should appear. 82.210.159.30 15:26, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Absurd

This term can be traced back to the Etruscans, which could explain the appearance of the letter k, a letter less favoured by Latin than the letter c (the few Latin words containing a k are often borrowed from the Etruscans).

This "explanation" is an obvious absurd - the "K" letter has nothing to do with Etruscans. The "appearance of the letter k" is simply one of few relics of older Latin ortography, before the reform made at the end of the 4-th century BC IIRC, which introduced the new letter G, and completely changed the older usage of C, K and Q. 82.210.159.30 15:26, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Whichever is correct, the article ought to be consistent. The article is Kalends, but the headword is "Calends". We should be using one or the other, not both (but also mentioning the other spelling). Hairy Dude (talk) 17:05, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] K vs C

At 00:04, 13 February 2008, anonymous 74.232.93.17 made the edit (replaced all instances of the incorrect "Kalends" with "Calends", since calends is spelt with a "C". Whoever grossly mispelt Calends should leave this site forever.) However, Kalends was traditionally spelled and abbreviated with a K. Since I don't have a source for this, I'm not going to unilaterally change it back. I'm hoping someone else has a source. --kundor (talk) 22:06, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

My Concise Oxford Dictionary, 9th edition, prefers the C spelling, notes the K spelling, and says "Middle English via Old French calendes from Latin kalendae, the first day of the month, when the order of days was proclaimed, from the base of Latin calare, Greek kalein ('call, proclaim')". On the basis of this source, I'm going to go ahead and move it to Calends, noting Kalends as an alternative spelling. And on the subject of the rather dismissive edit summary from an anonymous IP user quoted above, I wish I could resist pointing out that s/he misspelt "mispelt", but I can't. --Karenjc 16:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)