Halloween: the eve of all hallows

The English word ‘Halloween’ comes from ‘All Hallows’ Even’, the evening before All Saints’ Day. Its roots run deep in Old English and Proto-Germanic, where ‘hallow’ meant holy or saintly and shared its origin with the idea of wholeness. The word links a cluster of days known as Hallowtide: All Hallows’ Eve, All Hallows (or All Saints), and All Souls.

Across Europe, the same observance took shape under different names. The Romance languages built on Latin ‘omnes sancti’ — French ‘Toussaint’, Italian ‘Ognissanti’, Spanish ‘Todos los Santos’. Germanic forms used compounds like ‘Allerheiligen’ and ‘allehelgensdag’. The Celtic tongues kept an older festival, Samhain, remembered today as Oíche Shamhna or Nos Calan Gaeaf.

‘Halloween’ still carries the structure of those older words: hallow (holy one) and even (eve, evening). The spelling may have shifted, but the language still remembers what it once marked — the turning of the year and the keeping of the saints.