Birch in March, Falling Leaves in November ── Ukrainian Months, Dates, and Numbers

In Ukrainian, March is бе́резень (BEH-reh-zen). The name comes from береза, meaning birch, and the Etymological Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language, compiled by the Institute of Linguistics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, explains that this is because birches begin turning green in this month. November’s листопа́д combines the words for “leaf” and “to fall”; December’s гру́день comes from a word for frozen clods of earth.

Below, we set out the names of the twelve months and the days of the week, how dates are written and read, and how numbers combine with nouns, based on Ukrainian dictionaries, the 2019 orthography (правопис), and the cabinet resolution that sets the rules for how official documents are written. All of this was checked as of September 2026.

The rough pronunciation guides given here are only approximate. Distinct Ukrainian sounds can come out looking the same in a simplified romanization (и and і are both rendered “i”), so they don’t exactly match the real pronunciation. Capital letters mark the position of the stress (accent), not volume. Distinctions that get lost in such simplified guides are covered in the article Ukrainian Greetings and Thank-Yous.

The Names of the Twelve Months Come from Nature and Farm Work

Below we line up the month names alongside the explanations given for each in the Etymological Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language (planned as seven volumes in all, with volumes 1–6 published between 1982 and 2012). The stress positions follow the notation used in the dictionaries published by the Ukrainian Lingua-Information Fund of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Month	Ukrainian	Rough pronunciation	Etymological dictionary’s explanation
January	сі́чень	SI-che-ni	From сікти, “to cut, to fell.” Said to derive from felling trees in January–February (for burning fields or for timber)
February	лю́тий	RYU-ti-i	From an adjective лютий meaning “harsh, cold, fierce,” turned into a noun
March	бе́резень	BEH-reh-ze-ni	From береза, birch. Birches begin turning green in this month
April	кві́тень	KUVI-teh-ni	From квіт, цвіт, meaning “flower.” Plants begin blooming at this point in spring
May	тра́вень	TORA-veh-ni	Listed as a word derived from трава, “grass”
June	че́рвень	CHE-ru-veh-ni	From черв, “worm/larva.” Linked to larvae growing in this month, from which a red dye was once extracted. The dictionary regards deriving it from червоний (“red”) as a less convincing theory
July	ли́пень	RI-peh-ni	From липа, the linden/lime tree genus. Липа blooms in this month (per the explanation under March)
August	се́рпень	SEH-ru-peh-ni	From серп, “sickle.” Originally meant “sickle month, harvest month”
September	ве́ресень	VE-reh-se-ni	Linked to верес (heather), a plant that flowers right around this time
October	жо́втень	JOU-teh-ni	Listed as a word derived from жовтий, “yellow”
November	листопа́д	RISUTOPA-do	Combines лист, “leaf,” and падати, “to fall”
December	гру́день	FURU-deh-ni	From груда, a clod or frozen lump of earth. The ground freezes at this time of year

February’s лю́тий was originally an adjective, so unlike the other months it inflects the way an adjective does. The 2019 orthography gives the examples лю́того (“of February”) and у лю́тому (“in February”).

The Same Name Can Mean a Different Month, Depending on Country and Era

The entry “Folk calendar” in the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU) states that these month names were shared across the Slavic peoples, but did not always denote the same month: червень has meant July, and листопад has meant October, and грудень has meant November, in various times and places. The same entry gives examples of older names too, such as calling February “the thing that warms your side” (bokohrii, in IEU’s romanization) and December “the cold thing” (studen).

The etymological dictionary also lists examples of this kind of shift. In Serbo-Croatian, листопад means October; in Czech, květen (the word corresponding to Ukrainian квітень) means May; in Polish, czerwiec (corresponding to червень) means June. Even names that look alike can be a month off in a neighboring language.

Russian month names do not belong to this lineage. February, for example, is февраль, and the etymological dictionary’s entry for февраль explains that this word, in Russian and elsewhere, entered by way of medieval Greek from Latin februarius (the month of the purification rite). The differences between Ukrainian and Russian are also covered in Where Ukrainian and Russian Differ.

The Names of the Days of the Week

Day	Ukrainian	Dictionary’s explanation
Monday	понеді́лок	From “after Sunday (неділя).” The dictionary defines it as “the first day of the week (after Sunday)”
Tuesday	вівто́рок	From “the second.” The second day, counting Monday as the first
Wednesday	середа́	From “the middle (of the week)”
Thursday	четве́р	—
Friday	п’я́тниця	The dictionary defines it as “the fifth day (after Sunday)”
Saturday	субо́та	—
Sunday	неді́ля	From an expression meaning “not to work” (не ділати). Originally meant “a day of not working, a day off.” The dictionary notes it can also mean “week” in colloquial speech

When saying “on Monday” or “on Friday,” the day name changes form after the preposition у (в). Usage examples in the 20-volume dictionary include в понеділок (on Monday), у вівторок (on Tuesday), у п’ятницю (on Friday), and у неділю (on Sunday). Feminine nouns like п’ятниця and неділя change their endings to -у/-ю. Wednesday’s середа́ shifts even its stress in this form, becoming у се́реду (per the inflection table in “Словники України online”).

When using a month name, as in “in March,” a different form is used. Dictionary examples include в липні (in July), у вересні (in September), and в жовтні (in October) — the ending changes to -і.

Dates Go in “Day.Month.Year” Order

Ukrainian government documents write dates in day, month, year order. Article 32 of the “Standard Instructions for Records Management at Ministries, and Other Central and Local Executive Bodies,” approved by Cabinet Resolution No. 55 of January 17, 2018, states that when writing in numerals only, the day and month are each given as two digits separated by periods, the year is given as four digits, and no period follows the final digit — giving the example 02.12.2017.

If you’re used to the Japanese way of writing dates (2017年12月2日, 2017/12/2), it’s easy to misread 02.12.2017 as “February 12.” In Ukrainian documents, the first two digits are the day, and the middle ones are the month.

The same Article 32 states that legal texts and documents involving money use a form that writes the month in words (02 грудня 2017 року). Even when the day is a single digit, it is written with a leading zero to make two digits.

The Month Takes an “Of” Form

In 02 грудня 2017 року, грудня is the genitive (“of”) form of December, гру́день. In dates, the month name is put in the genitive. The 2019 orthography gives 1 січня 2000 року (January 1, 2000) as an example of a date, and in its section on noun inflection states that the genitive ending for month names is -а/-я, citing січня and листопада as examples.

November’s листопад needs care. The same orthography distinguishes between листопада as the genitive of листопад the month, and листопаду as the genitive of листопад the phenomenon of leaf fall. The 20-volume dictionary likewise gives листопад two senses: “leaf fall” (genitive -у) and “November” (genitive -а).

The Day Is Read as an Ordinal

When spoken aloud, the day of the month is said as an ordinal number (“first,” “fifth,” and so on) in the neuter form. The 2019 orthography gives examples such as the following:

• пе́рше бе́резня (March 1)
• Сьогодні п’яте лю́того. (“Today is February 5.”)
• П’ятого лю́того 2018 ро́ку (“on February 5, 2018”)

The form of the ordinal changes between п’яте, used for “today is the fifth,” and п’ятого, used for “on the fifth.” The orthography states that ordinals are usually written in words, and that when written as numerals, the ending is joined with a hyphen, as in 5-й (“the 5th”), whereas in dates no ending is written at all (1 січня 2000 року).

The Year, Too, Is an Ordinal, and Only the Last Word Changes

The year is also read as an ordinal. In an ordinal made up of several words, only the final word changes form. In the orthography’s examples, “of 1991” is ти́сяча дев’ятсо́т дев’яно́сто пе́ршого (року), and “in 2018” is у дві ти́сячі вісімна́дцятому (році). Up through ти́сяча дев’ятсо́т дев’яно́сто (1990) the form does not change; only the final “first” or “eighteenth” does.

Combining Numbers and Nouns

The numerals (words for numbers) from 1 to 10 are given as follows in the inflection tables of the 2019 orthography:

Number	Ukrainian	Note
1	оди́н／одна́／одне́	Changes form for masculine, feminine, and neuter
2	два／дві	дві is used with feminine nouns
3	три
4	чоти́ри
5	п’ять
6	шість
7	сім
8	ві́сім
9	де́в’ять
10	де́сять

The noun that combines with a numeral changes form depending on the number. There are three basic patterns:

• 1: оди́н, одна́, одне́ change form to match the noun’s gender. The noun itself stays singular
• 2–4: the noun takes a plural form. The orthography states that masculine nouns take the ending -и/-і when combined with два, три, or чотири, giving два хло́пці (“two boys”), три робітники́ (“three workers”), and чотири слухачі́ (“four listeners”) as examples
• 5 and above: the noun takes the plural genitive (“of” form). The 20-volume dictionary’s entry for п’ять notes that it governs “кого, чого” (“of whom, of what,” i.e. the genitive), giving the example п’ять синів (“five sons”)

With 2–4, even the position of stress can shift for some words. According to the inflection table in “Словники України online,” the plural of середа́ (Wednesday) is се́реди, but the table adds the note “but дві, три, чотири середи́” — stress moves to the end when combined with these numerals.

The numerals themselves also change form. Per the orthography, 11 through 19, 20, and 30 inflect the same way as п’ять, and compound numerals (numbers made of several words) change every word’s form. The orthography’s example, meaning “from 478,659 hryvnias,” is з чотирьохсо́т сімдесяти́ восьми́ ти́сяч шестисо́т п’ятдесяти́ дев’яти́ (гривень) — all seven number-words are in the genitive.

Once you can read the numerals in a date and say the days and months, you can read the dates on letters and the deadlines in documents. The time difference between Japan and Ukraine is set out in the article Kyiv Is Seven Hours Behind Japan, Six in Summer.