From the Eponymous Adjectives Word List
As ranked across 4 mega-corpora. See the full list of eponymous adjectives:
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15036.90246

Julian
Overall rank: 205th
Scientific rank: 38th

Namesake Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), Roman dictator
% Change from 1967-1987 +9
Decade of 1st prominent use pre-1675
peak usage year since 1675 1853 (1762)
Used as much as sociohistorical
Used 2x as much as Jovian
Used half as much as Columbian
Era Classical Antiquity
Sample quote [O]n the Julian calendar it is customary to refer to the year preceding 1 C.E. as 1 B.C.E., counting it as a leap year in accordance with the every-fourth-year leap-year rule of the Julian calendar.
Quote source Calendrical Calculations
By Nachum Dershowitz, Edward M. Reingold (2008, Cambridge University Press; p. 14)
Text Julian. Julian.
This year, 2016, is divisible by 4, so it is a leap year with 366 days. Have you ever wondered when & why we started using them?

You can thank Julius Caesar for this. Caesar was a powerful Roman general who became the “first among equals” of the leadership, which really means dictator. In between conquering Europe, having a love affair with Cleopatra, and being stabbed to death by Brutus, Caesar noticed that the months didn’t match the seasons. So he used his power to fix this!

Here was the problem—let’s say you want to sacrifice to the god of war, Mars. Well, you should do it during his month: March (Martius). But you know, March is supposed to be springtime, and lately it’s been happening in the super cold winter! It kind of ruins the mood of killing a cow for Mars, right?!

So a new calendar was made to reform the old Roman one. Now we call this the Julian calendar. To push March back into place with the spring equinox, the year 46 BCE was given 445 days! People called this “the year of confusion”. The next year, 45 BCE, had 365 days and this is what we call the first of the Julian calendar. They also scheduled a leap year every 4 years, because they knew each year was about 365 and a quarter days long. In fact, they knew that each year was just under 365.25 days, but they thought, “Eh, it’s close enough. By the time someone notices, the Roman Empire will be gone anyway.”

Indeed, Western countries used the Julian calendar for 1600 years until 1582, when the modern Gregorian calendar came into use. By that time, the Julian calendar had jumped 10 days ahead, and the spring equinox was getting closer and closer to February.

There are also things called Julian periods, Julian dates and days, but these were invented by some guy named after some other Julius about something else, so we’re not going to worry about those.

Julian, as it refers to Caesar, almost always means the successful calendar created during his short reign.

Post-script
The old Roman calendar only had 10 months, and the last 6 of them were simply named by their position: SEPTember was the 7th month, OCTOber was the 8th month, and so on. Hundreds of years before the Julian reforms, two months were added to the beginning, and the whole counting system was shifted. After Julius Caesar’s death, Quintilis was renamed July in his honor, and after his nephew, Augustus Caesar’s death, Sextilis was renamed August.

49 BCE = 355 days
48 BCE = 355 days
47 BCE = 355 days
46 BCE = 445 days
45 BCE = 365 days
44 BCE = 365 days)

One year = 365.242 days

sources: Google Ngram Viewer
Wikipedia
“The Calendar” In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg on BBC Radio 4 [ Ссылка ]

music: “Phrygian Minor” by Scott Sprankle [ Ссылка ]

свернуть