May is the month of growth, named for a goddess so ancient and so quiet that she almost vanished from the mythological record. Unlike the bombastic Mars or the two-faced Janus, Maia was a figure of earth-bound nurture, and her month captures the moment when the Roman agricultural world burst into its fullest vitality.
The Latin 'Māius' is an adjective meaning 'of or belonging to Maia,' from the name of the Italic goddess Maia. This native Italian Maia was a deity of growth, warmth, and the increase of the earth's fertility — her name is generally connected to the Latin adjective 'māior' (greater, larger) and ultimately to the Proto-Indo-European root *meǵ- (great), which also produced Latin 'magnus,' English 'major,' 'majesty,' and 'magnitude.' She was a genuinely archaic figure: the Flamen Volcanalis (priest of Vulcan) sacrificed a pregnant sow to Maia on May 1, and the offering's fertility symbolism suggests she was originally an earth-mother figure connected to the productive heat of late spring.
The Italic Maia was later conflated with the Greek Maia (Μαῖα), the eldest and most beautiful of the Pleiades, who bore Hermes to Zeus in a cave on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. The Greek name Maia may derive from a different root — possibly Greek 'maîa' (nurse, midwife, grandmother) — making the two goddesses etymologically distinct despite their merged identity in Roman religion. This kind of syncretism, where native Italic and imported Greek deities were fused based on superficial similarities, was characteristic of Roman religious practice.
The poet Ovid, in his 'Fasti,' offered an alternative etymology for May, connecting it to 'maiōrēs' (elders, ancestors), and proposing that May was the month honoring the older generation, just as June honored the 'iūniōrēs' (younger generation). While this theory has a pleasing symmetry, most modern scholars prefer the Maia explanation, since the Romans themselves clearly associated the month with the goddess and performed rituals in her honor on the Kalends of May.
The English word 'May' is attested from the Old English period as 'Maius,' borrowed directly from Latin. The Anglo-Saxon name for this month was 'þrimilcemōnaþ' (three-milkings month), a wonderfully vivid name indicating that cows gave so much milk in May that they could be milked three times a day. This native name, like all the Anglo-Saxon month names, was displaced by the Latin term during the Christianization of England.
May's cultural associations in English are overwhelmingly positive. May Day (May 1) has ancient roots as a celebration of spring, marked by dancing around the Maypole, crowning a May Queen, and gathering hawthorn blossoms ('going a-Maying'). These customs, documented since at least the fourteenth century in England, likely preserve pre-Christian fertility rituals associated with the Celtic festival of Beltane, which also fell on May 1. The Maypole itself — a tall pole decorated with ribbons around which dancers weave — has been interpreted as a symbol
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, May 1 acquired a second, entirely separate significance as International Workers' Day, commemorating the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. This political May Day has no etymological connection to the pastoral one, and the two coexist in an uneasy cultural duality.
The superstition against marrying in May — 'Marry in the month of May, and you'll surely rue the day' — has deep roots. Ovid noted that Roman priests discouraged May weddings because the month contained the Lemuria (May 9, 11, and 13), a festival for appeasing the 'lemures,' the restless and potentially malevolent spirits of the dead. Marriages during such a spiritually hazardous period were considered ill-omened. This prohibition persisted in folk tradition long after its original rationale was forgotten.
Across the Romance languages, May preserves its Latin name transparently: French 'mai,' Spanish 'mayo,' Italian 'maggio,' Portuguese 'maio,' Romanian 'mai.' The Germanic languages also adopted the Latin form: German 'Mai,' Dutch 'mei,' Swedish 'maj,' Danish 'maj.' The near-universal use of the Latin name is a measure of just how completely Rome's calendrical conventions conquered Europe.