enero

Forms

enero m (plural eneros)^[1] Old Spanish texts write ianero, janero, jenero, ienero, genero and henero beside enero.^[2][3] Asturian has xineru and Aragonese chiner or chinero.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish enero, earlier ianero and jenero, inherited from Vulgar Latin ienuārius (“January”), the form of Latin Iānuārius that many Latin inscriptions show.^[3][6][7][1]

Italian gennaio, French janvier, Logudorese bennarzu and, through a variant with a doubled /n/, probably janeiro continue the inscriptional form.^[3][8] Corominas thinks that Spanish, like Catalan gener and Gascon, comes rather from a shortened variant *ienārius.^[3][9] The Mozarabic, Leonese and Aragonese forms keep the initial consonant that Castilian lost: Abencuzmán wrote Mozarabic yenair about 1150, and today Asturian has xineru and Aragonese chiner.^[3][4]

The Latin month name is an adjective, “of Janus”, used with the Latin word for “month”; it was the first month of the Roman year from 153 BC.^[10] It is formed from iānus (“arched passage, doorway; the god of gates and doors”), which de Vaan traces to a Proto-Indo-European noun *ieh₂-n-u- (“passage”).^[11] Wiktionary connects it with the root Proto-Indo-European *yeh₂- (“to go”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DCECH's first record is ianero or ianer in an Aragonese charter of 1171, then jenero in another of 1192; the form enero appears in a document of 1218 in Menéndez Pidal's collection.^[3][6] The CDH's earliest hit, the Fuero de Zorita de los Canes (1218–c. 1250), uses the word for the month as a term of the farming year: desde entrada de enero fasta quelas vinnas sean uendimiadas “from the beginning of January until the vineyards are harvested”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The meaning has stayed the same: the month itself, used from the start to date charters, as in enno mes de ienero (1250).^[12][3] Covarrubias in 1611 explained it as the door of the year, named after Janus, who was shown with two faces looking at the old and the new year.^[13] The Diccionario de Autoridades added that Numa Pompilius had put the month into the calendar and dedicated it to Janus.^[14]

The Academy's dictionaries recorded proverbs about it: en enero, ni galgo lebrero ni halcón perdiguero, advice not to hunt in January (1817), and enero y febrero comen más que Madrid y Toledo, said by cattle dealers because animals lose flesh in the months without grass (1843).^[15][16] The DLE also lists the phrase cuesta de enero, the hard weeks after the Christmas spending.^[7] In Galician, andar á xaneira is said of a cat in heat, after the month when this happens.^[3] Several languages of the Philippines took the word from Spanish, such as Tagalog Enero.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1150 – the Mozarabic form yenair in Abencuzmán.^[3][6]
• 1171 – ianero or ianer in an Aragonese charter, the first record in a Spanish text.^[3][1]
• 1192 – jenero in another Aragonese charter.^[3]
• 1218 – the form enero in a document published by Menéndez Pidal.^[3][6]
• 1259 – a text of Alfonso X writes yanero.^[17]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin ianuarius as its equivalent.^[18]
• 1549 – the first record from the Americas, in Cuzco.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias relates the name to Janus and to the door of the year.^[13]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology “Del lat. ianuarius” for the first time.^[20]

Meanings

Noun

1. January: the first month of the year, with 31 days: Nos casamos un frío día de enero.^[7][1][21]

Related words

• Latin Iānuārius
• Portuguese janeiro
• Catalan gener

Usage notes

Like the other month names, enero is written with a small letter and is masculine.^[7][1] The abbreviation is ene.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. enero
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 611
4. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. 3588
5. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. xineru
6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. enero
7. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. enero
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 4576
9. ^ Coromines, Joan (1980–2001), Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana, 10 vols., Barcelona: Curial / La Caixa (online ed., Institut d'Estudis Catalans 2024), p. 4, 461
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. enero
13. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 740
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 3, 461
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 359
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 296
17. ^ Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. enero
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 344
19. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. enero
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 427
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. enero