Cheshvan

It happened again. Sure enough, the hazzan in shul announced the coming of the new month in this way: ... ראש חודש חשוון יהיה ביום הראשון. I was half expecting it, actually. The issue? חשוון, rather than the actual name of the month, מרחשוון. And I bet many readers were expecting this post. :)

Put plainly, the issue concerns the 'fact' that the name of the eighth month on the Hebrew calendar is Marheshvan, while many people call it instead Heshvan or think that it is really two words, Mar Heshvan.

There are a lot of homiletics concerning the name of this month. Mar means drop, as in a drop of water. This month inaugurates the rainy season. Or mar means bitter. This month is bitter since it is the only month of the calendar without a special holiday of some sort. So mar, bitter, was added to the month. Or it is bitter because this was the month in which Jeroboam wages his rebellion, setting in motion the split between the Israelite and Judean kingdoms. Alternatively, the word mar was subtracted from the real name, marheshvan, because it means bitter Heshvan!

The names of the Hebrew months, as is well known, are of foreign, rather than indigenous Israelite, origin. In the Bible months are often simply called "first month" and so-forth. Sometimes names are given. For example, an alternate name for the first month is abhibh (Exodus 13:4). In the Tanakh, the second month is also called zibh (i Kings 6:1), &c. During the so-called First Exile the Jewish months assumed foreign names. This is best illustrated in the books Ezra and Esther, where the twelfth month is called adar (Ezra 6:15, Esther 3:7). Also named in Esther are the first month (no longer zibh, now called nisan, Esther 3:7) and the tenth month (now called tebheth, Esther 2:16). The names of these months come from the language we now call Akkadian.

The Akkadian names[1] were something like the following, in its order (with the Jewish months in their order next to them):

Nisanu.................................Nisan
Ayaru...................................Iyar
Simanu................................Sivan
Tamuzu...............................Tamuz
Abu.....................................Av
Ululu...................................Elul
Tashritu..............................Tishrei
Varahshamnu......................Marheshvan
Kislimu................................Kislev
Shabatu...............................Tevet
Tebetu.................................Shevat
Adaru..................................Adar

As you can see the lists are fairly close. In some cases most of the consonantal and vowel structure is the same (like Nisanu and Nisan). In one case the order is switched (the 10th and 11th months). In addition, there are some consonant shifts, more about that below.

This foreign origin was well known and never forgotten. Talmud Yerushalmi Rosh Ha-shana 1:2 says א"ר חנינה שמות חדשים עלו בידם מבבל, “the names of the months ascended with them [the returnees at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah] from Babylonia.”[3]

As can be plainly seen from the list, the consonants /m/ interchange with /b/ or /v/ (and those with /y/). Thus, Simanu becomes Sivan; Kislimu becomes Kislev. Talmudists or people who actually read Daniel (ch. 5:7) know that Hebrew argaman, ארגמן, purple, is Aramaic argavana, ארגוונא. Yeshiva schools are called yeshiva, ישיבה, or a mesivta, מתיבתא. (from Hebrew root ישב, to sit or Aramaic מתב, to sit). Another well known interchange is Hebrew Yavneh's Latin-English equivalent, Jamnia. As is probably clear by now, all these sounds are made with the same parts of the mouth , in this case the lips. I think Dave from Balashon once suggested pinching your nose and saying "Yabneh" out loud to hear your own mouth say what sounds more like "Yamneh."

In any case, it is clear that the month Marheshvan comes from the Akkadian Varahshamnu. What is that month's etymology? It seems that is is a compound of two words ורח שמנה, its Hebrew equivalent nothing more than ירח שמנה, the eighth month. There was a great article in Jewish Action a few years ago by Rabbi Ari Z. Zivotofsky about this etymology. He speculates that the pronunciation of the Yemenite Jews, something like 'Mrahshwan,' as opposed to Marheshvan, might be more accurate in that its pronunciation preserves this compound or in some way reflect its real origin. And yes this entire post is really nothing more than a repost of something I posted last October 31. What merited its revisiting was, as I said, that the month was announced on Shabbos from the bima as the coming of Cheshvan.

Let me say now that, at least in matters of language, I lean more towards being a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist. If many people say חשוון then it is a valid alternate of מרחשוון. Not only that, it is probable that מרחשוון is the minority. If anything, we מרחשוון people need to defend it as a valid alternate name! I'm not sure how much Google mirrors reality, but if you google חשוון and מרחשוון (or its defective variants חשון and מרחשון) it is clear that מרחשוון loses. Big time.

To illustrate this graphically, take the case of the eighth French month, Ao?t. It is pronounced simply as /oo/. It descends, as does our eighth English month, August, from the Latin AVGVSTVS. In Italian it is Agosto. Apparently the proto-French people, Latin speakers, slurred their words more than the proto-Italians; Latin speakers. From Augustus evolved Ao?t. But it exists today frozen in a spelling in which more than just /oo/ was pronounced. The word evolved in French pronunciation until all that is left is a mere /oo/.[3]

Who will deny that in French the eighth month is indeed spelled Ao?t and indeed pronounced /oo/? Therefore it is ultimately fallacious to deny that the ninth Jewish month is not called חשוון, or at least cannot be called חשוון. It certainly can be.

In any case, אַ!אַ גוטן חודש

Update: The Jewish Worker notes that the Knesset will consider passing a bill to rename the month Cheshvan! You can't make this stuff up. Also noted by Jameel.

Update ii: R. Rich Wolpoe posted about this more than a month ago as well.

[1] Note that this is not nor is it intended to be a scientific transcription of the Akkadian names. See "The Fifth-Century Jewish Calendar at Elephantine" by S. H. Horn; L. H. Wood, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1. (Jan., 1954), pp. 1-20.
[2] This handy translation, as well as some good discussion of the issue is from B. Barry Levy's "Contemporary Jewish Booklore: The Exegetical and Editorial Work of Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz and Rabbi Nosson Scherman."
[3] This handy example comes from Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language: The Evolution of Mankind's Greatest Invention.