Calendar

For no pressing reason – a note to myself as much as anything – I thought I would post the names of the months of the French revolutionary calendar, together with the information that they were devised by Fabre d’Églantine, poet and dramatist, who ended up under the guillotine (there’s a surprise) and that the calendar itself was in use from November 1793 until the end of 1805, although it was deemed to have begun on 22 September 1792. So, those months then:

Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivôse, Pluviôse, Ventôse, Germinal, Floréal, Prairial, Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor.

I have absolutely no idea how those names translate into Esperanto, but I suppose if you bung an “o” on at the end of each you won’t go far wrong.

ADDENDUM : Mention of the guillotine leads me to add that the first models of the new improved execution engine were constructed by Tobias Schmidt, by trade a maker of harpsichords.

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