Months in Russian: the twelve names in Cyrillic, IPA and date forms

From Latin through Greek: the history of the Russian month names

The Russian month names are Latin names that travelled through Greek. Wiktionary's etymologies take almost every one back to a Medieval Greek form, and from there to Latin: январь from Ianouários and Latin Iānuārius, февраль from Phebrouários, март from Mártios. They reached Russian with Christian writing in Old Church Slavonic, and the old spellings still look Greek: Old Church Slavonic had генварь for January, close to the Medieval Greek Γενάρης.

October has a story of its own. The regular form would have been октомбрь, after Greek Oktṓmbrios, and Old Church Slavonic shows that form. Russian instead built октябрь by analogy with the three neighbours that end in -ябрь, so that September to December rhyme: сентябрь, октябрь, ноябрь, декабрь. Wiktionary calls the result an Octember.

Russian is unusual among its neighbours in using the Latin set at all. Ukrainian січень, Belarusian студзень, Polish styczeń, Czech leden and Croatian siječanj for January are native Slavic words, and the other months follow the same native pattern in those languages. The months in many languages table lets the two traditions be compared row by row.

Writing dates with the months in Russian

A Russian date is day, month, year, and the month stands in the genitive case, of January instead of plain January: 28 октября 2026 года. The year also goes into the genitive, года, and is shortened to г. in writing. CLDR gives the long Russian date pattern as d MMMM y г., for example 28 октября 2026 г., and a weekday in front makes the full form: среда, 28 октября 2026 г.

Spoken dates use an ordinal number in the neuter, agreeing with the unspoken word число (date): двадцать восьмое октября, the twenty-eighth of October. Wiktionary's example for май is Девятое мая, the ninth of May. In short numeric form Russia writes the day first with full stops between the parts: 28.10.2026.

To say in a month, Russian uses в with the prepositional case: в январе, в мае, в октябре, in January, in May, in October. For January, February and September to December the stress moves to the ending in all these forms, January being янва́рь but января́ and в январе́. The stressed forms are worth learning together with the word.

Lower case, soft signs and common mistakes

Months in Russian are written in lower case, like the days. A capital letter belongs only at the start of a sentence or inside a proper name. Learners who write Январь in the middle of a line carry an English rule into Russian.

Eight of the names end in a soft sign ь, which softens the preceding consonant and is not a vowel. Dropping it, as in январ, is a spelling error. The soft sign disappears in the other cases because the ending takes its place: январь, but января, январе. Май ends in й, and its forms follow the same pattern with я and е: мая, мае.

A mistake to avoid is the nominative in a date: 5 март instead of 5 марта. With months the preposition for in is always в: в марте, never на марте.

Abbreviations and Latin spellings

Russian abbreviates a month by cutting it after a consonant and adding a full stop: янв., февр., апр., авг., сент., окт., нояб., дек. Short names stay whole. CLDR's stand-alone set keeps март, май, июнь and июль unshortened, and its date-context set writes мар., июн. and июл. but keeps мая in full. Every cut form ends in a consonant, so сентябрь becomes сент., keeping the т.

Transliteration gives the months in Russian several Latin faces. BGN/PCGN, used in the table, writes yanvarʹ and iyunʹ; the scholarly system in Wiktionary writes janvarʹ and ijunʹ; English texts often drop the soft-sign mark altogether. Only the Cyrillic is unambiguous, and a Latin form is useful only with its system named.