“Nobody knows where April's name comes from. The Romans had three theories, and scholars have been arguing about it for two thousand years.”
The most common explanation links Aprīlis to the Latin verb aperire, meaning 'to open' — as in buds opening, earth opening, the season opening after winter. This is the tidy etymology, and it appears in the writings of Varro, the Roman scholar, in the first century BCE. It makes botanical sense. April is when things open.
The second theory traces April to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, via her Etruscan form Apru. The Etruscans preceded the Romans in central Italy, and many Roman religious practices were Etruscan hand-me-downs. If Aprīlis comes from Apru/Aphrodite, then April is a love goddess's month — which aligns with the fertility rites performed in spring.
The third possibility, offered by some Roman writers, is that Aprīlis simply derives from an unknown Etruscan word with no clear connection to either Latin or Greek. This is the least satisfying answer and therefore probably the most honest one. Not every word has a clean origin story. Some arrive in a language fully formed, with the receipt lost.
English got April through Old French avril. April Fools' Day may trace to 1564, when France moved its New Year from late March to January 1 under the Edict of Roussillon. People who continued celebrating the old New Year in late March and early April were mocked as fools. The month of uncertain origin became the month of deliberate confusion.
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Today
April is tax month in the United States, autumn's start in the Southern Hemisphere, and the cruelest month according to T.S. Eliot, who opened 'The Waste Land' in 1922 with the line 'April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land.' He meant that spring forces new growth on those who would rather stay dormant.
The unsettled origin of the name fits. April is the month that cannot decide what it is — warm then cold, sunny then storming, winter's last protest and spring's first demand. Even its etymology refuses to commit.
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