GEN: -ber suffix question

[Briar Sauro <bsauro@FRIENDSSEMINARY.ORG>]

Hi LM_NETters,

I had a 1st graders ask a difficult question today and you know us
librarians... now I really want to find a good answer for him. He asked
what "-ber" meant, as in SeptemBER, OctoBER, NovemBER, DecemBER. I know
that the prefixes are Latin for the numbers of the original months, and I
know that in Middle English it was "-bre" and not "-ber." But I can't find
any mentioned of what that -ber or -bre suffix means. Any ideas? Someone
suggested it means "month," but from which language?

Thanks for any direction.
Briar Sauro
Lower School Librarian
Chair, Department of Information Resources
Friends Seminary
New York, NY

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