Fontinalia, garlanding of fountains, Roman Empire

Festival dedicated to Fontus (Fons), the god of wells and springs and son of Juturna and Janus. From this God's name and the Latin word font or fons we derive the names of fountain, the baptismal font and the fonts, or typefaces, that we use most days.

The latter comes from the font, or well, of hot metal (usually an alloy of lead, tin and antimony) from which letters were cast in letterpress printing. The Latin verb fundere, from fons, meaning to pour out, gave the French fondre, to melt or pour out, which led to our typeface word. A cognate is the Sanskrit dhanvati, meaning flows, runs ...

Tagged: calendar+customs, ancient+rome, language