I saw a news story recently about the sale of a rare Eid Mar aureus; you can read all about such coins here:
Marcus Brutus had declared to Cassius that “On the Ides of March I gave my own life to my country, and since then, for her sake, I have lived another life of liberty and glory” (Plutarch, Life of Brutus, XL.8). Fittingly, therefore, on the reverse of the denarius above is the embossed legend EID MAR (Eidibus Martiis), which abbreviates the Ides of March, the day that Caesar had been assassinated in 44 BC. […]
My question, of course, was “Why Eid rather than Id?” Fortunately, that question was asked on Quora and answered by Will Scathlocke:
Eidus is just an older way of spelling idus. A living language evolves, and what had initially been the diphthong /ei/, by the first century B.C. had been monophthongised to /i/ and most people had updated their spelling accordingly. When Brutus struck his coin, eidibus martiis, “on the Ides of March”, was just old-fashioned spelling. After all, there are still a few people left today, who write “cocoanut” while you no doubt, who have moved with the times, spell it “coconut”. As for me, who am behind the times, I still write “cocoanut” because that is how my teachers, who themselves were behind the times, taught me to spell it. As to the abbreviation itself, the Romans seem to have abbreviated words in slightly arbitrary fashion instead of by inflexible rule. (E)id was just how they abbreviated the word.
The OED updated its entry in November 2010:
Etymology: < classical Latin Īdūs, feminine plural noun ( < the same Italic base as Oscan eiduis (dative/ablative plural), further etymology unknown (perhaps an Etruscan loanword)); subsequently reinforced by its reflex Anglo-Norman and Middle French ides, Middle French ydes (French ides) (c1119 in Anglo-Norman; in Anglo-Norman and Old French also in singular ide). Compare Italian idi, plural noun (14th cent.).
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