Autumn Surprises

The abrupt change from summery to autumnal weather in late August prompted me to research the name of the season. This revealed several surprises. Firstly that autumn was not widely used in English until the 16th century. It came via Old French autumpne or automne (13c.) from Latin autumnus. Could this be the inspiration for CS Lewis’ Narnian faun, Mr Tumnus, I wonder? Italian autunno, Spanish otoño and Portuguese outono also derive from the same word, whose origin is obscure but may connect to Vertumnus, an Etruscan deity, god of the changing year.

According to ‘Etymonline,’ harvest was the English name for the season between summer and winter until autumn began to displace it in the 1500’s.

Old English hærfest, one of the four seasons, or the period between August and November, from Proto-Germanic harbitas from Proto Indo European root kerp- "to gather, pluck, harvest." Am I missing something? How did we jump from kerp- to haerfest?

My second surprise was that in Old and Middle English, harvest was primarily a season name, with only an implied reference to the gathering of crops. To me, harvest evokes so keenly images of tractors and combine harvesters combing the fields, and, of course, harvest festival displays of pumpkins and corn dollies and the singing of ‘We plough the fields and scatter.’ This meaning "the time of gathering crops" has, though, been around for centuries, since the mid 1200s. The sense was extended to the action of harvesting and its produce after 1300. After 1500 these had become the the main senses of harvest, and both autumn and fall were used as the season name. Here is my third surprise - that fall was an English name for autumn long before the Mayflower set sail for the New World. 

Image by Couleur, Pixabay