The calends or kalends () is the first day of every month in the

Roman calendar The Roman calendar was the calendar used by the Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic. Although the term is primarily used for Rome's pre-Julian calendars, it is often used inclusively of the Julian calendar established by Julius Caesar in 46&nbs ...

. The English word "

calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A calendar date, date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is ...

" is derived from this word.

Use

The Romans called the first day of every month the ''calends'', signifying the start of a new

lunar phase A lunar phase or Moon phase is the apparent shape of the Moon's directly sunlit portion as viewed from the Earth. Because the Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, the same hemisphere is always facing the Earth. In common usage, the four maj ...

. On this day, the pontiffs would announce the number of days until the next month at the Curia Calabra; in addition, debtors had to pay off their debts on this day. These debts were inscribed in the ''kalendaria'', effectively an accounting book. Modern calendars count the number of days ''after'' the first of each month; by contrast, the Roman calendar counted the number of days ''until'' certain upcoming dates (such as the calends, the nones or the ides). The day before the calends was called ''pridie kalendas'', but the day before that was counted as the "third day", as Romans used inclusive counting. To calculate the day of the calends of the upcoming month, counting the number of days remaining in the current month is necessary, then adding two to that number. For example, April 22 is the 10th day before the calends of May (ante diem decimum Kalendas Maias/Maii), because eight days are left in April and both end dates are included in the total.

Computation

The following lines of poetry aid calculations relating to the day of the month from the calends: This means that the first day is called the ''calends''; six days after the calends is the ''nones'' of May, October, July and March, while the nones comes only four days later for the other months; the ''ides'' comes eight days after the nones.

Expressions

The calends was a feature of the

, but it was not included in the Greek calendar. Consequently, to postpone something ''ad Kalendas Graecas'' ("until the Greek calends") was a colloquial expression for postponing something forever. This phrase survived for many centuries in Greek () and in the

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

(; ; ; ; ; etc.). The Latin term is traditionally written with initial ''K'': this is a relic of traditional Latin orthography, which wrote ''K'' (instead of ''C'' or ''Q'') before the vowel ''A''. Later, most Latin words adopted ''C'', instead. It is sometimes claimed that the kalends was frequently used in formal or high-register contexts, and that that is why it retained its traditional spelling, but there seems to be no source for this.

Use

Computation

Expressions

References

Further reading