In Germanic languages the word for summer is, well, summer applied as follows:
- sumor (Old English);
- simmer (West Frisian);
- zomer (Dutch);
- sumar (Old Norse/Icelanding);
- sommar (Swedish);
- Sommer (Danish, Bokmål Norwegian);
- sommar/sumar (New Norwegian);
These have, seemingly, little to do with the Slavic “summer” or:
- Leto (Czech/Slovak/Russian);
- Lato (Polish);
- Lito (Ukrainian);
- Leta (Belorussian);
- Ljeto (Serbian/Croatian);
- Poletje (Slovenian);
It might come as a surprise then that Old English months of June and July (roughly) bore the following names:
June
- lida (as per Bede’s On the Reckoning of Time or De Temporum Ratione);
- Ærra Līþa (as per George Hickes’ 1703 in De antiquae litteraturae septentrionalis utilitate sive de linguarum veterum septentrionalium usu Dissertatio epistolaris)
July
- lida (as per Bede’s On the Reckoning of Time or De Temporum Ratione);
- ærra litha (as per the 1031 Biblia Cattoniensis);
- Æftera Līþa (as per George Hickes’ 1703 in De antiquae litteraturae septentrionalis utilitate sive de linguarum veterum septentrionalium usu Dissertatio epistolaris);
Ærra Līþa literally means “ere” or “before,” presumably, Midsummer. Æftera Līþa literally means “after” Midsummer (?). There may also have been Þrilīþa meaning (?) “Third Midsummer” (perhaps in those years which had 13 months). (Whether these have anything to do with the, e.g., Polish lipiec (July) we do not discuss here. Suffice it to say that there seems to be a connection to the Slavic summer).
Perhaps (as per dictionary.com) this is related to lithe, i.e., Old English liðe “soft, mild, gentle, meek,” from (alleged) Proto-Germanic *linthja– (cognates: Old Saxon lithi “soft, mild, gentle,” Old High German lindi, German lind, Old Norse linr, “with characteristic loss of “n” before “th” in English”), from PIE root *lent- “flexible” (cognates: Latin lentus “flexible, pliant, slow,” Sanskrit lithi). In Middle English, used of the weather. Current sense of “easily flexible” is from c. 1300. Related: Litheness. (though one has to ask whether the loss of the “n” really happened in English if the word was lithi already (that is already without any “n”) in Sanskrit).
And what of light?
In this telling June/July would be the lithe or mild months. It is also hard not to notice the similarity of these words (as well as the Slavic Lato or Ljeto or Leto) to words such as lethargic. Is there a relation to summer? Perhaps. In Latin “deep sleep” or lethargy were called sopor and the God of Sleep was… Somnus. The cognates of that one are, supposedly, the following: Sanskrit svapnah, Avestan kvafna-, Greek hypnos, Lithuanian sapnas, Old Church Slavonic sunu, Old Irish suan, Welsh hun “sleep,” Latin sopor “a deep sleep.” And then there is Old English swefn, Old Norse svefn “a dream”. Not to mention the Polish/Czech/Slovak sen which has the identical meaning of “a dream.” (Same for Serbo-Croat/Slovene san(je)).
Brueckner’s arrogance wafts off the paper
Further, what appears to be March was called in Germanic languages (among other versions) hlytha, hlyda, hlydmonath. Whether this has anything to do with the, e.g., Polish name for February – luty – we leave to the readers.
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