Months in Dutch: januari to december, abbreviations, spelling, dates

Small letters, maart and the -i endings

The months in Dutch are common nouns and take a small letter: in januari, eind december. Wikipedia's article on Dutch date notation states the rule together with the one for weekdays. English speakers tend to capitalise them by reflex, and a capital M on maart in the middle of a sentence is the most common slip in learners' Dutch.

Most of the names are the Latin ones with a Dutch ending. Januari and februari end in -i, juni and juli look almost English, and augustus keeps the Latin -us that English dropped. Oktober is spelt with a k, the only month whose consonants differ from English. Maart and mei are the two that look least like their English cousins: maart has the long aa that Dutch writes double in a closed syllable, and mei uses the diphthong ei, the same sound as the ij in vrijdag.

Juni and juli differ by a single consonant, l against n, so a learner reading a date aloud should give that consonant its full weight.

How to write a date with the months in Dutch

Dutch dates run from the smallest unit to the largest: day, month, year. Written out in full, a date looks like zondag 10 september 2000. In figures the parts are separated by dashes or slashes, 10-9-2000 or 10/9/2000, and Wikipedia notes that the form without leading zeros is the more common one.

No ordinal ending is needed in the written date, and there is no word for of between the day and the month: 3 maart, never 3 van maart.

With a month alone Dutch says in: in maart, in de zomer. The beginning and end of a month are begin and eind: begin januari, eind december. The English pattern of on the third of May has no direct equivalent; op 3 mei is the normal way to put it.

Maand, the word for month

The Dutch word for month is maand, a feminine noun with the plural maanden. Wiktionary traces it through Middle Dutch mâent to a Proto-Germanic word that comes from the same root as moon, so maand and maan sit as close together in Dutch as month and moon do in English.

Maand builds many everyday compounds. Maandelijks is monthly, maandloon a monthly wage, maandenlang for months on end, and a schrikkelmaand is a leap month. A dertiende maand, a thirteenth month, is the extra month's pay that many Dutch employers add at the end of the year; the word is listed among the derived terms of maand. All these words follow the same rule as the months in Dutch themselves and take a small letter.

Abbreviations of the Dutch months

The usual short forms are jan., feb., mrt., apr., aug., sep., okt., nov. and dec. Mei, juni and juli are left as they are: the Wikipedia table of Dutch abbreviations repeats them in full, since a cut would save one letter at most.

March is the odd one out. Its abbreviation mrt. takes the consonants of maart, so it cannot be mistaken for mei or for a three-letter cut of maandag, ma. The other abbreviations simply cut the word after three letters, okt. after the k of oktober.

Belgium, Suriname and the old Dutch names

The month names are the same in the Netherlands, in Flanders and in Suriname, and so is the order of a written date. Differences between Belgian and Netherlands Dutch lie elsewhere, in vocabulary and pronunciation, as the Wikipedia article on Belgian Dutch describes.

Older Dutch also had native month names, and the list of derived terms for maand still contains lentemaand, spring month, and herfstmaand, autumn month. Wiktionary records louwmaand for January, from Middle Dutch loumaent, and points to sprokkelmaand for February; both carry the label archaic. In a letter, a contract or an appointment only the Latin set from januari to december is used.

The months of the year in neighbouring languages make the family visible: German Januar and März, Afrikaans Januarie and Maart, West Frisian jannewaris. The months of the year in many languages set the Dutch row beside them.