Audrey attends a secondary school in Dublin: I'm asked not to say where. She wrote to ask about the origins of our names for the seasons.
Let's start with the dreary one we call winter, reckoned astronomically from the winter solstice to the vernal equinox that is in this part of the world from December 22nd to March 20th.
So much for astronomers, but the older people where I live in rural Wicklow regard All Saints' Day as the start of winter and its end St Brigid's Day, February 1st. Spenser, I think, was right in simply regarding winter as the frigid time of year in which a man's breath freezes and sticks to his beard.
Winter was also winter in Old English, Old Frisian and Old Sax on. Gothic had wintrus and wen trus, which led some scholars to believe that it came originally from a form of the Indo-European base -wed, -wod or -ud reflected in the English words wet, water, otter.
Spring got its name from the sense which means the rising up or springing into existence. Spenser described it prettily:
Lusty Spring is all dight [dressed] in leaves of flowres/
That freshly budded and new bloosmes did beare/
In which a thousand birds had built their bowers.
Summer is sumor in Old English, sumer in Old Norse. A cognate word outside the Germanic languages is Old Irish sam, hence our modern Irish samhradh. The ultimate origin of these words is thought to be the Sanskrit sama, season or half-year. Summer is sometimes used to convey the meaning "year": witness "just a lad of eighteen summers" in the ballad Kevin Barry. Spenser, again:
Then came the jolly Summer, being dight/
In a thin silken cassock coloured greene,/
That was unlyned all, to be more light . . .
That lovely word autumn is from Old French autompne (modern automne), from Latin autumnus, sometimes spelled auctumnus, a words of uncertain origin. "Autumpne cometh", sang Chaucer, "heuy of apples".
The term Fall, used universally in the United States, was once called the fall of the leaf in England, and Fall is still used in some English dialects.
Let Spenser sing us out:
Then came the Autumne, all in yellow clad,/
As though he joyed in his plentious store,/
Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad/
That he had banisht hunger, which, to-fore/
Had by the belly oft him pinched sore.
Good luck with the project, Audrey.