eastern and western day/planet associations (a bit long)

Factual Questions
1

In many western languages the days of the week are associated with a heavenly body.

Here is English-Spanish-Latin-planet:

Monday-Lunes-dies Lunis-moon
Tuesday-Martes-dies Mari-Mars
Wednesday-Miercoles-Mercurii dies-Mercury
Thursday-Jueves-Jovi dies-Jupiter
Friday-Viernes-Veneris dies-Venus
Saturday-Sabado-Saturni dies-Saturn
Sunday-Domingo-dies Solis-sun

A few dont correspond: in Spanish Sabado is related to the Hebrew Sabbath, relating to our word seven, and Domingo is (my guess) related to the Latin dominus meaning master or lord, thus “day of our Lord”. The English Thursday is Thor’s day, Friday is Frigg’s day (wife of Odin), Wednesday is Odin’s day, and Tuesday is complicated but ultimately from Latin “deus”.

Many Asian languages (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and surely others) have this SAME correspondence.

The Chinese characters also have element correspondences:

Monday-moon-?
Tuesday-Mars-fire
Wednesday-Mercury-water
Thursday-Jupiter-wood
Friday-Venus-gold
Saturday-Saturn-soil
Sunday-sun-?

Now heres my question(s):

Why do eastern and western days have the same planetary association? I assume China influenced the rest of Asia, but why is it exactly the same in eastern and western days? It must have been cross-pollination, but when and how did it occur? Whats up with the elemental references?
RK

2

Astrologers have been galavanting across the Eurasian Continent for a while. IANA Archeaological Historian, but I do know that there were contacts between the East and the West way before Marco Polo brought us the spaghetti (and before you pounce on me… we all know that one’s a myth). Since astrology has been going on since as far back as recorded history can go, it would actually be more surprising if there WEREN’T cross-cultural crossovers.

3

Monday = wan jan, moon = duang jan
Tuesday = wan angkha:n, Mars = lO:k phra angkha:n
Wednesday = wan phoot, Mercury = da:o phra phoot
Thursday = wan phareuhat, Jupiter = da:o phareuhat
Friday = wan sook, Venus = da:o phra sook
Saturday = wan sao, Saturn = phra sao
Sunday = wan a:thit, Sun = a:thit

So the relationship is there in Thai. Don’t know if those words are coming directly from Pali Sanskrit or have a different derivation.

By themselves, wan = day; d:ao = star; phra literally means monk, but also is used as a sort of superlative or honorific word; duang = heart, sort of.

4

Very interesting.

This site says that there is indeed a connection, and traces it back to the “Seven Luminaries” of ancient Meospotamia.

5

I don’t know too much about the subject but the days of the week from chinese class were just numbers
Monday - xing qi yi - Weekday 1
Tuesday - xing qi er - Weekday 2
Wednesday - xing qi san - Weekday 3 ( This is why I like Chinese very logical. the months work the same way)
ect ect ect except sunday which is xing qi ri or xing qi tian depending on who you ask, both meaning sunday ,which I think is according to my teacher was taken from the western model. Probibly has some astrological meaning that might match up though, but not in the modern names for the day. i think I just wanted to post my 100th post.

6

From this thread

7

Nope. Like Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, this one’s Norse. Tiw/Tyr’s day.

It lines up with Mardi/Dies Martis (Mars’ Day) because Tiw and Mars were both gods of war.

8

Tito Bento:

I was talking primarily about the written symbols, although the association is also the same in Vietnamese which has a phonetic alphabet (ours).

Tengu:

The OED says:

“OHG Zio, ON tyr a Teutonic god identified with Mars, f. Gmc cognate of L deus god”

So the big question is what is the origin of what. Does the word tyr come from deus? Thats what the OED is implying. If so, I would say Tuesday comes from deus.

9

  1. It’s implying no such thing. It says they are cognate - they share a common ancestor.

  2. By the above logic, my user name means ‘Meteor’ - as Tengu is derived from Tien Guo (Sky Dogs) - a phrase referring to shooting stars.

10

The problem is that the written symbols don’t have the characteristics you are talking about. All the days have the same first two characters (xing and qi) so not much use talking about them, but the last one does not represent anything but a number. For instance the yi in xing qi yi (Monday) is just a straight line meaning one, moon is a completly different character. Xing qi er (Tuesday) is just the same only with two straight lines. After three it gets more complicated but they are still just numbers. Sunday does have a sun character though.

11

I did some research and discovered that centuries ago the chinese indeed used the system you are talking about, which they spread to Japan and Vietnam. But it went out of style a century or so later and replaced by another system and then in the 19th and 20th century they adopted the current one. They borrowed the idea from the Indians through the flow of buddhist thought. And the Indian borrowed it from the Greeks. This web sight has a whole lot of info about it http://cjvlang.com/Dow/main/sitemap.html

12

Tengu:

I understand that they share a common ancestor.

But with that logic how can you say a) it comes from tyr but b) not deus? What is, then, the relationship between tyr and deus? How can you say conclusively a is true but not b?

13

Thanks for the nod, bibliophage. Notice that Saturday is the first day of the week then.