The Voynich Manuscript contains something almost rude.
Readable words.
Not many.
And not where we most need them.
Across the zodiac pages, near the central signs, appear month names written in a familiar European alphabet. They look nothing like ordinary Voynichese. They include forms conventionally read as mars, aberil, may, jong, iollet, augst, septembre, octembre, novembre and decebre.
For anyone who has stared at hundreds of unreadable Voynich tokens, this feels like water in a desert.
Then the bad news arrives.
The month names appear to belong to a different hand from the main manuscript.
They are later annotations.
They may tell us how a later reader understood the zodiac pages.
They do not automatically tell us what language the original Voynich script encodes.
The month names are unusually readable evidence precisely because they belong to the wrong layer to function as an automatic key.
Quick Read
- Month names appear on the zodiac folios from Pisces through Sagittarius.
- They are written in a familiar alphabet rather than the main Voynich script.
- They are generally treated as later additions by a different hand.
- The surviving sequence begins with March; the manuscript lacks corresponding surviving Capricorn and Aquarius zodiac pages for January and February.
- The forms are clearly Romance-language or Romance-dialect material, but their exact regional classification has been debated.
- French, Northern French, Occitan, Catalan/Spanish-related and mixed regional readings have all appeared in the literature.
- René Zandbergen currently considers a Northern French reading the most convincing, while other researchers continue to argue for Occitan or broader Romance interpretations.
- Recent 2026 discussion has correctly emphasised that the regional debate itself is not settled enough to become provenance.
- The month names do strongly confirm that later readers understood the circular pages as zodiac/month material.
- They do not establish the language of Voynichese.
- They do not prove the manuscript was produced in the region whose dialect best matches the annotations.
- Their greatest value is stratigraphic: they are a readable layer added to an unreadable older system.
Where the Month Names Appear
The familiar month labels occur in the central regions of zodiac diagrams on folios 70v through 73v.
A commonly used reading list is:
- f70v2 — Pisces: mars
- f70v1 / f71r — Aries: aberil
- f71v / f72r1 — Taurus: may
- f72r2 — Gemini: jong
- f72r3 — Cancer: iollet
- f72v3 — Leo: augst
- f72v2 — Virgo: septe(m)b(r)
- f72v1 — Libra: octe(m)bre
- f73r — Scorpio: nove(m)bre
- f73v — Sagittarius: decebre
Several zodiac signs occur on multiple panels or pages, so April and May appear more than once.
The exact transcription of individual letters is not perfectly uncontested. Medieval handwriting is not typeset text. Abbreviations, damaged strokes and letter-shape variation matter.
But the larger pattern is difficult to dispute.
These are month names.
Why March Comes First
The surviving zodiac sequence begins with Pisces and March rather than Capricorn and January.
This does not mean the manuscript necessarily used March as the conceptual first month of its year.
The Capricorn and Aquarius material is not preserved in the surviving zodiac sequence.
Therefore the visible starting point combines two questions:
- what the original zodiac sequence contained;
- what the surviving codex happens still to preserve.
A missing beginning should not become a calendrical theory without additional evidence.
The Layer Is More Important Than the Language
Most popular discussion begins with the dialect question.
French?
Occitan?
Catalan?
Something from a contact zone?
Those are legitimate questions.
But a more important conclusion comes first.
The month labels are not written in the same graphical system as the main Voynich text.
They therefore belong to a distinct manuscript layer.
This means the month-language problem and the Voynich-language problem cannot simply be merged.
Later Does Not Mean Useless
Calling the labels later additions does not downgrade them to noise.
A later annotation can preserve valuable evidence about reception.
Someone encountered these diagrams after the main pages had been produced.
That person—or the tradition from which the labels derive—recognised the zodiac signs well enough to attach ordinary month names to them.
This tells us at least three things.
- The zodiac iconography was legible to a later European reader.
- The month/sign relationship was important enough to annotate.
- The manuscript remained an active object of interpretation rather than merely an unread curiosity on a shelf.
That is real historical information.
The Central Icon Was Easier to Read Than the Surrounding Text
This is an elegant little demonstration of how different evidence channels survive differently.
The original central zodiac sign remains visually recognisable.
The main Voynich labels around it remain unread.
A later reader could therefore recover one layer of meaning from iconography even if the writing system was already opaque.
That distinction matters far beyond these pages.
Information can remain recoverable in one channel after another channel has lost its decoder.
Northern French, Occitan or Something Else?
The month-name dialect has attracted more confidence than the evidence comfortably supports.
Several forms look broadly Romance.
Some have been compared with Occitan or Catalan-style spellings.
Others have strong parallels in medieval French traditions.
René Zandbergen’s current synthesis regards Northern French as the most convincing broad reading and points to similar month-name forms on a medieval French astrolabe.
Other researchers continue to argue that Occitan or southern Romance evidence deserves more weight.
Recent 2026 discussions have also highlighted an important methodological weakness in older claims: some dialect attributions were repeated for years without the sort of systematic palaeographic and orthographic audit one would want before turning them into geographic evidence.
The appropriate current status is therefore:
Romance-language month names: strong. Precise regional dialect identification: debated.
Why “Northern French” Would Still Not Mean “Voynich Was Made in Northern France”
Suppose tomorrow several specialist palaeographers agreed that the month names are unmistakably Northern French.
What would that prove?
It would strongly localise the annotation practice or writer’s scribal-linguistic environment.
It would not automatically localise the original codex.
Books travel.
Readers travel.
Annotations can be added centuries after production.
A manuscript made in one region can acquire notes in another.
The correct inference is:
annotation geography is not automatically production geography.
Why the Month Names Cannot Simply Decode the Zodiac Labels
The month name sits near a recognisable sign.
A ring of Voynich labels surrounds that sign.
Surely one of those labels must mean the month?
Perhaps.
But there are many other possibilities.
- The later writer may have added a month label to identify the whole page rather than translate any Voynich token.
- The original labels may name degrees, stars, people, days, subdivisions or something else.
- The later writer may have understood only the central sign, not the original text.
- The month relation may have been obvious iconographically without any knowledge of Voynichese.
A real bilingual crib requires an explicit mapping relation.
Co-location is not enough.
See The Crib Problem.
Could the Month-Name Writer Read Voynichese?
Possible.
Not demonstrated.
The writer could have been:
- someone who understood the original text and added helpful month labels;
- someone who understood only the zodiac iconography;
- a later owner organising the manuscript;
- a reader copying labels from another source;
- a cataloguer or student trying to make the strange pages easier to navigate.
Each scenario predicts different evidence elsewhere.
A fluent Voynich reader might leave additional semantic annotations.
An iconography-only reader might label recognisable pictures and ignore the main text.
The manuscript currently supports the existence of the later month layer more strongly than any of those motivations.
Could the Same Hand Have Written f116v?
This question appears regularly because both the month labels and f116v contain familiar-looking European writing outside the main Voynich script.
Some observers have proposed connections.
The comparison is worth testing.
It is not established.
The samples are short, and short handwriting samples are difficult to attribute confidently. Similar regional script habits can also make different writers look related.
A strong same-hand claim would need stable diagnostic letter forms and ductus features—not merely the fact that both layers look more readable than Voynichese.
See f116v: The Last Page That Almost Looks Readable and The Ductus Problem.
The Month Names Are a Dating Problem Too
If the month-name hand can eventually be dated palaeographically with useful precision, it would give us a terminus for the annotation event.
That would not date the main manuscript directly.
It would establish that by the annotation date:
- the zodiac pages existed in recognisable form;
- the relevant folios were accessible to the annotator;
- the reader understood at least the sign/month relation;
- the codex had entered the annotator’s cultural environment.
This is exactly how later layers can contribute chronology without pretending to date earlier layers.
The Sequence Is Itself Evidence
The writer did not add random month words.
The names track the recognisable zodiac progression.
Pisces receives March.
Aries receives April.
Taurus receives May.
Then Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius continue through June to December.
This consistency tells us the annotator was applying a coherent calendar-zodiac mapping rather than merely identifying isolated drawings.
That is stronger than one readable note.
It is a small system.
Could the Annotations Have Been Copied From Another Calendar?
Yes.
A later reader did not need to generate the spellings independently.
They could have copied month forms from a calendar, almanac, astrolabe, book of hours or another reference tradition.
This matters for localisation.
The spelling could reflect the source from which the labels were copied rather than the annotator’s own everyday dialect.
Therefore even a strong dialect match must be translated cautiously into biography.
The Missing January and February Problem
Because Capricorn and Aquarius do not survive as part of the visible zodiac sequence, no corresponding January and February month labels survive there either.
This is a useful reminder that the annotation layer is constrained by the survival of the underlying pages.
We cannot infer how the writer would have spelled those months from absence alone.
Nor can we assume the original zodiac programme necessarily began exactly where the surviving sequence begins.
Month Names Versus Voynich Labels: A Natural Experiment
The zodiac pages contain two textual populations sitting close together.
- main Voynich-script labels and circular writing;
- later alphabetic month names.
This provides a useful comparative opportunity.
We can ask whether the month name physically overlays existing lines.
Whether it occupies deliberately blank centre space.
Whether month-name ink differs from the primary layer.
Whether the same hand appears elsewhere.
Whether annotation placement respects diagram orientation.
None of those questions requires knowing what the Voynich labels mean.
What Would Strengthen a Regional Attribution?
- Produce high-confidence palaeographic transcriptions of every month form.
- Separate secure letters from ambiguous strokes.
- Compare forms against dated and localised manuscript corpora rather than a handful of lookalikes.
- Compare competing regions under the same search depth.
- Use orthography, not merely vocabulary.
- Use ductus and letter construction where the scans permit it.
- Test whether all months fit one coherent regional system rather than selecting only the convenient forms.
- Distinguish the geography of the spelling model from the geography of the physical annotation event.
Only after those steps should the month names be asked to contribute materially to localisation.
What the Month Names Do Not Prove
- They do not prove the main Voynich text is French.
- They do not prove the main Voynich text is Occitan.
- They do not prove the manuscript was produced where the annotator’s dialect originated.
- They do not prove the annotator could read Voynichese.
- They do not provide a direct bilingual mapping.
- They do not establish the same hand as f116v.
- They do not date the original writing merely by dating the annotation.
What They Do Give Us
- A clearly readable later textual layer.
- A coherent month/zodiac mapping applied across surviving signs.
- Strong confirmation of how a later reader interpreted the central zodiac imagery.
- A possible palaeographic and dialectal localisation target.
- A natural comparison with other later hands.
- A reminder that different layers of one codex can preserve different languages and writing systems.
- A demonstration that readable evidence can be historically important without being a decoder.
Primary School: The Label Somebody Added Later
Imagine finding an old map with unknown writing.
Years later, somebody writes “Singapore” beside one island.
The new label tells you how that later person understood the map.
It does not automatically translate every old word on the map.
That is the month-name problem.
Secondary School: Separate the Layers
Take a modern textbook and add handwritten notes in the margin.
Now photocopy the page centuries later.
A future researcher sees two writing systems on one sheet.
Ask students what evidence could distinguish:
- original print;
- later handwriting;
- language of each layer;
- date of each layer;
- whether the annotator understood the original book.
JC and Adult Readers: Treat Annotation as a Separate Corpus
Do not pool the month names with Voynichese.
Represent each month annotation with:
- folio and zodiac sign;
- high-confidence letters;
- ambiguous letters;
- abbreviation marks;
- ink/colour;
- orientation;
- candidate palaeographic date;
- candidate dialect region;
- comparative forms in dated manuscripts;
- confidence.
Then test the month-name system as its own historical object.
Reader Checklist: Before You Use the Month Names as Provenance
- Are the letters securely transcribed?
- Is the month identification secure?
- Is the annotation hand demonstrably later than the main script?
- Which regional spellings were compared?
- Were competing regions searched equally?
- Could the form have been copied from another calendar source?
- Does one regional model explain all month spellings?
- Is annotation geography being confused with production geography?
- Is a later readable language being projected onto Voynichese?
- Does the proposed same-hand attribution have actual ductus evidence?
- What would falsify the regional reading?
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the Voynich month names readable?
Broadly, yes. They form a recognisable March-to-December month sequence associated with the surviving zodiac signs, although individual medieval letter shapes and expansions remain open to palaeographic refinement.
What language are they?
They are Romance-language forms. Northern French is currently a strong interpretation in René Zandbergen’s synthesis, while Occitan and other Romance regional readings remain part of the scholarly debate.
Are they written by the original Voynich scribe?
They are generally treated as a different, later hand rather than as part of the primary Voynich script.
Do they tell us the language of Voynichese?
No. A later annotation can identify a zodiac sign without translating the original labels.
Why are they important then?
They preserve a readable reception layer, demonstrate later interpretation of the zodiac pages and may eventually contribute to palaeographic dating or localisation of that annotation event.
Research Foundations
- René Zandbergen — The Voynich Writing System, including the month-name list and discussion of their later hand and Romance dialect.
- Voynich.nu — Quire 10, for Pisces and Aries month annotations.
- Voynich.nu — Quire 11, for the June–October zodiac foldout sequence.
- Sean B. Palmer — Voynich Manuscript: Months, a useful comparative transcription resource.
- Voynich Revisionist — 2026 expanded month-name correspondence discussion, useful as a record of current scholarly/community disagreement rather than consensus.
The Final Idea
The month names are one of the manuscript’s clearest gifts.
They show us a later reader touching the mystery.
That reader could see Pisces.
Could write March.
Could continue through the zodiac months.
And still left us no demonstrated translation of the surrounding Voynich labels.
The month names do not solve Voynich. They show how meaning can survive in the picture after it has disappeared from the script.