Arabic names of Gregorian months

The Arabic names of the months of the Gregorian calendar are usually phonetic Arabic pronunciations of the corresponding month names used in European languages. An exception is the Assyrian calendar used in Iraq and the Levant, whose month names are inherited via Classical Arabic from the Babylonian and Aramaic lunisolar calendars and correspond to roughly the same time of year.

Though the lunar Hijri calendar and solar Hijri calendar are prominent in the Middle East, the Gregorian calendar is and has been used in nearly all the countries of the Arab world, in many places long before European occupation. All Arab states use the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes. The names of the Gregorian months as used in Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen are widely regarded as standard across the Arab world, although their Classical Arabic names are often used alongside them. In other Arab countries, some modification or actual changes in naming or pronunciation of months are observed.

Iraq and the Levant

These names are used primarily in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine. Classical Arabic inherited the names from the Babylonian and Assyrian calendars, which are lunisolar. Although the Arabic names are cognate, they do not refer to the lunar months, as when the names are used in their original Babylonian. Nine of these names were used in the Ottoman Turkish calendar, of which five remain in use in the modern Turkish calendar.

No.	Month	Arabic name	Transliteration	Syriac cognate	Transliteration
1	January
2	February
3	March
4	April
5	May
6	June
7	July
8	August
9	September
10	October
11	November
12	December

Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and the Gulf

The names of the Gregorian months in Egypt, Sudan and the Gulf are based on the old Latin names.

No.	Month	Arabic name	Transliteration	Latin name	Egyptian pronunciation
1	January
2	February
3	March
4	April
5	May
6	June
7	July
8	August
9	September
10	October
11	November
12	December

Libya (1969–2011)

The names of months used in the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1977–2011) were derived from various sources, and were assembled after Muammar Gaddafi's seizure of power in 1969 and abolished in 2011 after the 17 February Revolution. The decision of changing calendar names was adopted in June 1986. The Libyan calendar, which followed the same sequence of renamed Gregorian months, counted the years from the death of Muhammad. This reckoning was therefore ten years behind the Solar Hijri calendar used in Iran and Afghanistan.

No.	Month	Arabic name	Transliteration	Meaning
1	January			that of the fires
2	February			the blooming
3	March			the spring
		was also used
4	April			the bird
5	May			the water
6	June			the summer
7	July			from Gamal Abd el-Nasser
8	August			from Hannibal Barca
9	September			referring to al-Fateh Revolution
10	October			the dates
11	November			the tillage
12	December			the canon

Algeria and Tunisia

The names of the Gregorian months in Algeria and Tunisia are based on the French names of the months, reflecting France's long colonisation of these countries (1830–1962 in Algeria; 1881–1956 in Tunisia).

No.	Month	Arabic name	Transliteration	French name
1	January
2	February
3	March
4	April
5	May
6	June
7	July
8	August
9	September
10	October
11	November
12	December

Morocco

As Morocco was long part of the Roman Empire, the long-standing agricultural Berber calendar of the country preserves the Julian calendar and (in modified form) the names of its months. There are regional variations of the Berber calendar, since some communities did not recognise the Julian 29 February in century years where the Gregorian calendar had no equivalent date. When Morocco adopted the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes, the names of the months were taken from this local tradition.

No.	Month	Arabic name	Transliteration
1	January
2	February
3	March
4	April
5	May
6	June
7	July
8	August
9	September
10	October
11	November
12	December

See also

• Gregorian calendar
• Islamic calendar
• Solar Hijri calendar
• Assyrian calendar
• Hebrew calendar
• Iranian calendars
• Babylonian calendar
• Pre-Islamic Arabian calendar
• Rumi calendar