Every January, without fail, I write the date down wrong at least once. That’s expected. But what’s less expected is that my brain occasionally still wants December to be the tenth month. Which, objectively, it isn’t, but linguistically? It kind of is. The names of the months don’t quite line up with their positions. September meaning seven, October eight, November nine, December ten, and once you notice it, you can’t unsee it. So, naturally, I wanted to know why does the year start in January, and why are the months misnumbered? As it turns out, the answer is not mathematical elegance, but rather Roman bureaucracy.