This thread
reminded me of a question I had. I’ve read Cecil’s column on how the days of the week were named but I have heard differently. I have read that they were named after the Norse Gods. Thursday- Thor’s Day and so forth.
If I am incorrect and Cecil is right then where did this come from that the days of the week were named after Norse gods?
well i can’t tell you about norse gods but i heard a bit differently one time. the german word for thursday is donnerstag. that translates literally to thunder’s day. i always assumed that thursday was another way of saying thundersday. which after a little thought here i guess could be a reference to thor god of thunder. so i’m sorry not to be of more help but a little more info is always fun!
I would have thought that the thread you mentioned had the answer to your question. It mentions that our English names for days are derived from Norse gods, but Cecil only answered the question of why there are seven days in a week. The romance languages names for days of the week are clearly derived from the planet names–and the Norse names were applied after.
Your answer is here:
To summarize, as RM said, the Romance language base the names of the week on Roman gods and celestial bodies. In Germanic languages, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday took the Norse equivalents.
Sunday - Sun’s Day
Monday - Moon’s Day
Tuesday - Mars’ Day → Tiw’s Day (war god)
Wednesday - Mercury’s Day → Wodin’s Day (wisdom)
Thursday - Jupiter’s Day → Thor’s Day (thunder)
Friday - Venus’ Day → Frigg’s Day (love)
Saturday - Saturn’s Day
It is interesting to note what the Slavic languages have done. In Polish we have the following:
Niedziela – Not sure of meaning
Poniedzialek – Day after (“po”) Niedziela
Wtorek – Not sure
Sroda --Middle Day
Wtorek – Fourth Day
Piatek – Fifth Day
Sobota – Sabbath Day
Obviously, you have to reorder the days of the week to make this work exactly. Perhaps somebody with a better knowledge of Slavic etymology can help me with this.
In Hungarian:
Vasarnap – Market Day
Hetfo – lit. “Seven head” i.e. “head of the week”
Kedd – ???
Szerda – from Slavic “middle”
Csutortok – from Slavic “fourth”
Pentek – from Slavic “fifth”
Szambat – I assume “Sabbath”
Here in Hungary, Monday is considered the start of the week. How “Wednesday” ends up being middle, I’m not sure, unless we only consider the five-day week and “Sabbath” and “Market Day” being extra days. But I believe the five-day week is a recent invention, at least in Western Europe.
whoops. thursday in polish should be “czwartek” not “wtorek” ma bad.
pulykamell sed:
I was given to understand that it meant “(day of)no work”: nie==no, dziela from dzielo==work.
-m
Yeah, I’ve been told that it comes from those words, but I’ve been told by a Serbian (similar word in that language) that the etymology is different. Unfortunately, I cannot remember what it was.
Here’s an earlier thread about Cecil’s column.
The Babylonians seem to have been the first to name days of the week after planets/gods around 700 BC. The Romans replaced the names with their own gods when Constantine borrowed the idea of a week in AD 321. The idea of a week didn’t make it to Britain until the time of the Anglo-Saxon conquests, who took up some old Roman customs but kept their own religion and gods, hence the changes to the Norse gods in the English day names.
Planet Ancient Planet-gods Day Name
Babylonian Roman Anglo-Saxon (English)
Sun Shamash Sol Sun Sunday
Moon Sin Luna Moon Monday
Mars Nergal Mars Tiw Tuesday
Mercury Nabu Mercurius Woden Wednesday
Jupiter Marduk Jupiter Thor Thursday
Venus Ishtar Venus Freya Friday
Saturn Ninurta Saturnus Saturn Saturday
Source: Calendar: Humanity’s Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year, by David Ewing Duncan (p. 56)
Okay…,but how did they choose the ORDER of the day names? I could see why they might put the sun and the moon at the beginning of the week, but why does the king of the gods come on Thursday?
Could it be that if you consider Monday the first day of the week, Thursday falls right in the middle instead of Wednesday? And still, how did they choose the placement of the other names?
From the same linked thread:
Please forgive me for copy/pasting an old post of mine, but this topic was my very first question way back on the SDMB… FWIW…
Why have most western languages adopted the Astronomical names for Saturday, Sunday and Monday (Saturn, Sun and Moon respectively) and yet chose different origins for the remaining days?
Saturn Sun Moon Mars Mercury Jupiter Venus -Astro.
Saturni Solis Lunae Martis Mercurii Jovis Veneris -Latin
Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday -English
Saterne’s Sun’s Moon’s Tiw’s Woden’s Thor’ Frigg’s -Saxon
Samedi Dimanche Lundi Mardi Mercredi Jeudi Vendredi -French
Sabado Domingo Segunda Terca Quarta Quinta Sexta -Portugese
Sabado Domingo Lunes Martes Miercoles Jueves Viernes -Spanish
Also, if anyone can shed light on the other origins in cultures that were isolated from Latin and Saxon influence, I would be greatly interested.
On a related note:
Here is some background into the way in which the days got their names from the seven ‘heavenly bodies.’ Rather than chart the whole thing in this posting, I will leave it to those who are interested to try it at home.
First, the order of the planets came from the duration of their Orbit, as viewed from Earth. In descending order, this gives us Saturn = 10,761 days, Jupiter = 4,332 days, Mars = 687 days, Sun = 365 days, Venus = 224 days, Mercury = 88 days, Moon = 29 days.
With this order, each of the hours in each of seven days is given a planet. Start at 1:00am Saturday with Saturn, 2:00am with Jupiter and so on. When you get to Midnight with Mars, the Sun is carried over to 1:00am Sunday. This continues until you have the days filled in, with 1:00am each day representing the name of the day as the Romans would have called them.
Don’t know about Polish, but in Russian “Nedelya” just means “week”. The days of the week are:
Monday - ponedelnik (“start of the week”)
Tuesday - vtornik (“second day”)
Wednesday - sreda (“middle day”)
Thursday - chetverg (“fourth day”)
Friday - pyatnitsa (“fifth day”)
Saturday - subbota (“sabbath day”)
Sunday - voskresenie (“Resurrection”)
As in Hungary, Monday is considered the first day of the week, which would make sense for a Christian culture - you’re supposed to rest on the seventh day, no?
I find these names kind of unimaginative (except for “Resurrection”), but the names of Slavic months are much more poetic. Russian months are cognates to Western European usage (Yanvar, Fevral, Mart, Avril, etc.) but Ukranian, Polish, and a few others use funky descriptive names like “traven” (grass-time?) for May and “listopad” (leaf-fall) for September (?).
As for the OP (ahem, sorry, got a little bit off-track there), the etymologies for the days of the week in my Concise Oxford seem to imply that the names of the Germanic/Norse gods were used to translate the Roman versions in terms the German tribes would understand.
I like that image. Picture a Roman and a German trying to communicate:
Roman: “See you next Jovis-day, then ?”
German: “Jovis-day - I’m not sure I really follow?”
Roman: “Y’know, Jovis ? The fellow with thunder, lightning etc. ?”
German: “Oh, that guy, Well, I suppose I should tell you that he’s known as Thor hereabouts. Next Thors-day it is, then.”
Sorry, not much else to contribute here.
S. Norman
Arabic days of the week
Sunday: yawm al-ahad (Day One)
Monday: yawm al-ithnayn (Day Two)
Tuesday: yawm al-thulâthâ’ (Day Three)
Wednesday: yawm al-arba‘â’ (Day Four)
Thursday: *yawm al-khamîs *(Day Five)
Friday: yawm al-jumu‘ah (Day of the Congregational Prayer in the Mosque)
Saturday: yawm al-sabt (The Sabbath).
Hebrew days of the week
Sunday: yom ri’shon (First Day)
Monday: yom sheni (Second Day)
Tuesday: yom shelishi (Third Day)
Wednesday: yom ribi‘i (Fourth Day)
Thursday: yom Hamishi (Fifth Day)
Friday: yom shishi (Sixth Day)
Saturday: shabbat (Sabbath)
[sub]Do I detect a pattern here?[/sub]
Persian days of the week
Sunday: yekshanbeh (Day One)
Monday: doshanbeh (Day Two)
Tuesday: seshanbeh (Day Three)
Wednesday: chahârshanbeh (Day Four)
Thursday: panjshanbeh (Day Five)
Friday: jom‘eh (Day of gathering for prayer in the mosque)
Saturday: shanbeh
That’s right, the name for Saturday is just plain “Day.”
If the Persian name for Monday looks familiar, it should. Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan, so called because originally it was the town where the weekly market was held on Monday.
Lithuanian days of the week
Monday: pirmadienis (First Day)
Tuesday: antradienis (Second Day)
Wednesday: treciadienis (Third Day)
Thursday: ketvirtadienis (Fourth Day)
Friday: penktadienis (Fifth Day)
Saturday: šeštadienis (Sixth Day)
Sunday: sekmadienis (Seventh Day)
The Lithuanians follow the odd Russian habit of starting the week on Monday. Is that something they picked up during the Soviet era?
Finnish days of the week
Sunday through Tuesday, the Finns just copied the Germanic names: sunnuntai, maanantai, tiistai. Wednesday is keskiviikko (meaning Midweek, like German Mittwoch). Thursday and Friday, torstai & perjantai, are recognizable as more Germanic loans, and Saturday, lauantai, is borrowed from Swedish.
Turkish days of the week
Sunday: pazar günü (Market Day)
Monday: pazartesi (Day after Sunday)
Tuesday: salï günü
Wednesday: [i/],car,samba* (borrowed from Persian chahârshanbeh)
Thursday: per,sembe (corruption of Persian panjshanbeh?)
Friday: cuma (Arabic jum‘ah)
Saturday: cumartesi (Day after Friday)
I can’t find where salï came from. It seems to be a native Turkish word but it wasn’t in Sir Gerard Clauson’s Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish.
Hindustani days of the week
Sunday: ravivâr (Sun-Day) or itvâr (Lord’s Day)
Monday: Hindi somavâr (Day of Soma/Moon); Urdu pîr (Old Man)
Tuesday: mangal (Auspicious, i.e. Mars–so called because Mars is regarded as malevolent, so it’s named with the opposite quality as an antidote)
Wednesday: budh (Mercury–same as Buddha; planet of the intellect)
Thursday: Hindi b.rhaspati (Jupiter); Urdu jum‘erât (Friday Eve)
Friday: Hindi shukra (Venus); Urdu jum‘ah (Day of gathering for prayer in the mosque)
Saturday: Hindi sanî (Saturn); Urdu haftah (‘week’–Persian word for ‘seven’).
So Sanskrit is one language where the mythological planets matched up with the Roman days. Perhaps because both ancient India and Rome ultimately got their astronomy/astrology from the Babylonians.