Month names collection / metastudy

[Koen G]

Thanks, Eggyk. Like I said, padding out the document with more instances of the standard sequence is helpful as well, because it highlights what the deviations are. Whatever the answer to this conundrum may be, it will be nuanced.

First things first: for all we know, these marginalia were written when the manuscript was already a few decades old. Since manuscripts and scribes may move, all possibilities are equal. No connection to any of the suspected places of origin of the MS? No problem: someone from a different region may have written in the MS years after its completion.

So what we're really looking at is the way (or a way) this individual wrote the months. This is my personal assessment so far:

• Mars is easy. It's standard in French. German prefers Mertz.
  
• Aberil is difficult. The form itself is exceedingly rare. Vowel-insertion has been mostly found in French, while the consonant spelled as "b" is more readily found in German. I'd be inclined to give the advantage to neither language group here, but others may disagree.
  
• May is near-universal.
  
• Yong is absent, but we can separate it into three sub-issues:
  - initial "y" is absent from our sample. We have ignored this mostly, but it may be relevant.
  - a single vowel (not followed by "i") is often "u". The form "iung" is often found in northern dialects of French.
  - "o" instead of "u" is very incidental, found once each in Picardy, Belgium and Norman-French. Again northern dialects of French.
  
• iollet is basically the same story as Yong, but the non-digraph form "u" is more common. Another half point for a broad range of northern dialects of French.
  
• Augst is the only month where, considered in isolation, one would conclude a Germanic language.
  
• All the other months are French, and Octembre is readily found, most often in northern dialects of French.
  

Everything considered, I'd say that this writer was most familiar with the month names in a northern dialect of French. With what we know, I would consider the months Mars, May, and all the -embre months as non-issues. For Augst, I would almost certainly consider English, Flemish or German influence. Our current, limited examples would suggest Normandy and thus an English (maybe Flemish?) influence. But more data would help.

Yong and Iollet are still the most puzzling to me, since these both should have changed their vowel quality from Latin "u" to "o". I can't think of any dialectical influence that would have caused this.