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+--- Thread: Month names collection / metastudy (/thread-4751.html)
RE: Month names collection / metastudy - eggyk - 31-07-2026
(31-07-2026, 01:58 PM)Pierre Dumont Himself Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The description says "Horae ad usum Mettensem", so it was produced for Metz. [url=https://portail.biblissima.fr/en/ark:/43093/tdata8bf5dafdb0d5252565b17e150e39871c0113e238][/url]
Unfortunately, that doesn't always mean it was written in Metz. They are often written in a different place to where they are expected to be used.
But it does make it more likely it was somewhere in NE france.
RE: Month names collection / metastudy - Koen G - 31-07-2026
Nice! I would also cautiously ascribe it to NE France, with a question mark. But like you say, for all we know it may have been produced in Paris or even the Low Countries.
If it was made in Cambrai like the "Heures de Boussu", that's actually the north of France, not NE (I changed it in the file).
RE: Month names collection / metastudy - eggyk - 31-07-2026
This has been my general rule of thumb (libraries differ constantly what they consider NE, N, NW to be for certain cities). Often NE just means "near or also in belgium" too. Obviously its not technically correct, but france is a weird shape.
EDIT: put a new map up, i drew the last one wrong lol. Cambrai is basically my border for N and NE france.
RE: Month names collection / metastudy - Koen G - 31-07-2026
Ah, excellent, feel free to change it back then, that's better.
RE: Month names collection / metastudy - Koen G - 08-08-2026
I've been seeing the "Occitan" claim being put forward a couple more times lately (without evidence, as so often). It is important to represent Occitan in our sample. I recall some people have looked into Occitan sequences, are those all part of the spreadsheet already? Any additional ones you can find, even if they don't look like the VM sequence, are handy to expand the sample size.
RE: Month names collection / metastudy - eggyk - 08-08-2026
Yes, I have specifically sought out Occitan examples, but they seem rather rare (or at least I really struggled to find many at all). It was actually the reason that I began also tracking the less interesting latin and german examples in the first place, in order to take sequences blindly from unbiased searches regardless of location. So at least from my side, pretty much any month sequence that i've come across -regardless of language- has been added either to the main sheet or to the 'Less interesting' sheet.
There are some langue d'oc entries on the list, often indicated by "Aost" for august, although some of those "Aost" sequences seem similar to the langue d'oil sequences too (join, joignet / joing, juglet), so i'm a little uncertain what is what honestly.
I do remember finding out that many occitan manuscripts were written in latin, and that many manuscripts written in occitan dialects were destroyed, which probably isn't helping either..
RE: Month names collection / metastudy - eggyk - 24-08-2026
I came across an interesting german manuscript containing "Apperill" which doesn't nicely fit anywhere on the sheet. There are basically 2 sequences fighting for their place, and it keeps changing throughout the section. There is also a seperate section with a third different sequence. This entry feels more difficult to localise compared to the other sequences found so far.
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c. 1450AD
Germany S? Austria? Nürnberg area? Swabia? Bavaria?
In the anonymous work containing apperill:
mertz, apperill, mey, prochmond, hewmonde, augst, herbstmond, weinmond, winttermond, hartmond
mertz, apprill, mey, noch mayen, augst, noch augst, erst herbst, andern herbst, wintermond, letzstmond
and in a prior section, a copy of Ordnung der Gesundheit:
mertzen, apprellen, meÿen, prochmonde (junio), hewmonde (julio/erst augst) , ander augst, esten herbst (semptembri), andern herbst (octobri), tritten herbst (nouembri/ersten wintter), andern wintter (decembri).
Origin
The manuscipt was dedicated to Graf Rudolf von Hochenburg and his wife Margarethe von Tierstain, from families based in Germany SW and Switzerland N respectively (at least, as far as I could find via google).
According to the 1972 dissertation by Christa Hagenmeyer (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) cataloguing the various versions of Ordnung der Gesundheit, the scribe identifies himself as being from (Schwäbisch?) Hall, but Hagenmeyer lists the manuscript as from the "Nuremburg area".
According to this catalogue by Wellcome Library (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), this manuscript has previously been compared to a later printed 1482 version from Ulm.
And to top it off, Handschriftencensus (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) simply lists the language as "Ostoberdeutsch" (Eastern Upper German).
Using other sequences for an origin
I also had a look at the spreadsheet to try and see if/where we had seen these sequences before to try and work out an origin.
Mey
Mey is also spelled as meygen / meÿen. May with a G is relatively rare, but has been found in various places broadly across southern germany, stretching from Strasbourg, into Swabia, and into Bavaria/Austria. It has also been found in Cologne once.
Prochmond
The month of june varies wildly, switching B->P and A->O constantly. However, there are rather few instances of a beginning P and the use of O for both vowels. There are 2 instances of "Prochmon" from Nuremburg, and 1 "prochmon" from Tegernsee in SE germany. But given the huge variety of spelling for this month in general I wouldn't rely on this.
aügst
aügst spelled with a ü is also relatively rare on the sheet (perhaps I haven't marked them all?). The few located entries are from, Salzburg, "Bavaria?", and Northern Bavaria. There is also an instance of aüst from Freising.
Letzstmond
Letzstmond / letzsten mond has been found overwhelmingly in Bavaria, with multiple entries from Nuremberg, with others stretching down to the Ger/Aus border, and a couple of examples from Vienna.
Hartmond
The alternative "Hartmond" is way rarer, with 3 examples from the bavaria / tyrol border region (hartmanod, hartmonad, hartmonat). There is also one example potentially from Speyer (near Heidelberg) which has "hartmont" or "hartmant". The only other comparable usage of this for december is from northern germany, with "Hardemaen". I believe that some of the germanic dialects/languages approaching the netherlands and belgium also used a similar name of "hard month" for january as well.
Monde suffix
Something else is that monde with a final de is actually quite rare. There are three examples from Alsace (+one from the upper rhine), 1 from "Germany middle" and 1 from Eisleben (Curiously near the other halle (Saale)). As far as I could find, we have never logged a bavarian entry with that suffix.
So.. frustratingly, the spreadsheet gives a rather similar spread for the origin of these spellings. The best evidence is hartmond, which has only really been found convincingly on the Bavaria/Tyrol border. But in those cases, april was universally spelled with a b and the months didn't end in "monde".
Tl;dr I don't know where it's from. If anyone knows how to identify the surrounding language with a degree of certainty, please let me know.
RE: Month names collection / metastudy - Koen G - 24-08-2026
This appears to be one of those MSS where "a" and "o" can be impossible to tell apart (both can look like "o" with a kind of pointy top). It's also remarkable that the page you link writes apprillen, appril and apperil. Almost like the "e" is a one-off insertion based on pronunciation.