Month names collection / metastudy

[eggyk]

Another possibility (which may overlap with that one) is that the Labeler copied the names from some book.  That could explain also the discrepancy (that, IIRC, some have noted) between the date of the handwriting style and the date range for the "octembre" spelling.  Namely, the book where the Labeler copied the names from was written in the early 1400s, but the copying happened at a later date.

This has been a hunch i've had for a while, namely that the month names may be roughly contemporaneous with the VMS instead of being far later additions. Nowhere near enough examples have been found in enough contexts for this to be convincing yet. The octembre data is just an interesting trend that somewhat goes against expectations, but it is not suggestive that the month names must have been written earlier. There are countless reasons why Books of hours (most entries) may follow a different trend to other texts, especially considering the fact that the months were headers surrounded by illuminations, not scribbled labels. 

So it's possible, but as Koen mentioned there are examples of octembre up to the end of the 15th century. Additionally, there is 1 example of an 'o' present in june up at around 1470-90AD, and critically it is being used in a table, not in a formal calendar. July is the biggest question mark as we've only ever encountered 3 examples of 'oi' (not even a lone 'o'), never with the use of 'll' instead of 'ng', and never after the 14th century.