Is there a relation between the moon and the word month (moonth)?

Question

I was watching this movie called "He Died with a Falafel in his Hand" (good movie by the way) and there is a part where this Pagan woman is talking about how there were originally 13 moonths in the year for the 13 cycles of the moon. She also talked about how in Pagan times the Pagan King, chosen by the Pagan matriarch, would be sacrificed on the end of the 13th cycle in which his ashes were supposed to bring new fertility to the earth. The abolishing of this system by a Christian patriarchal system not only got rid of the follow of the 13 moon cycles but also is where the number 13 comes from as being seen as unlucky. Is there any truth to this or is this a bunch of B.S. made up by the writer?

Answer 1

I also liked the film very much. The book by John Birmingham on which the film is based is very funny, too.
The similarity of the words "month" and "moon" is no coincidence, since the cycles of the moon have been the basis for many different calendar systems for thousands of years. And since a year consists of a bit more than 12 lunar cycles (from full moon to full moon or new moon to new moon), there are calendar systems with 12 months, some with 13 months and some with a 13th "reserve" month to be inserted every time the year cycle gets seriously out of whack with the 12 months system.

As a consequence of the moon cycle as a basis of the months in the calendar year, there are many languages where the words for "moon" and "month" are similar:
English is a example for a Germanic language. Other closely related languages have similar word pairs (in the following list the word for "moon" comes first, the word for "month" after it):
German: Mond - Monat
Swedish: måne -månad

The same goes for the larger family of Indo-European languages of which the Germanic languages form a branch:

Slavic languages:
Russian: месяц (mesyats) - месяц (mesyats)

Baltic languages:
Lithuanian: menesis -menesis

Celtic languages:
Irish Gaelic: mi - mi

Ancient Greek: mene - men

Armenian: amsoy - amsoy

Albanian: muaj - muaj

Also in other language families:
Fenno-Ugric languages:
Estonian: kuu - kuu
Finnish: kuu - kuukausi
Hungarian: hold - hónap

Semitic languages:
Hebrew: yare'akh - yerakh (month)

American indigenous langauges:
Quechua (the old language of the Incas, still spoken today by millions of people in the South American Andes mountain range:
killa - killa

Indonesian: bulan - bulan


So much for some of the background. As far as the Pagan woman is concerned, in the book and the film she is probably just meant as another addiion to the large list of crackpots the main character encounters in shared housinbg.

Answer 2

Moon Related Words

Answer 3

Below is the etymology of the word MOON as we use it today.

[Origin: bef. 900; ME mone, OE mōna; c. OHG māno, ON māni, Goth mena; akin to G Mond moon, L ménsis month, Gk mné moon, Skt māsa moon, month] [Dictionary.com]

If the year had thirteen moon cycles, rather than 12, winter would be on a different set of months every year...

Answer 4

Of course there is a relation.
The moon travels around the world in roughly a month.

The etymology has developed via German:
der Mond (the moon)
der Monat (the month)

You are welcome