# Names for the days of the week

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-the-days-of-the-week/59842>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 28, 2001, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-the-days-of-the-week/59842 "2001-03-28T16:09:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 5

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2002, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-the-days-of-the-week/59842/81 "2002-11-19T22:02:49Z")

</div>

I get it, it’s like the Hungarian _szombat_. Linguists call that pre-nasalization. In French, first the b was prenasalized with m, then the b was elided altogether, leaving only the m.

But what caused the nasal onset in the first place? This is something more common in certain Polynesian languages, like Fijian in which all the voiced stops are prenasalized. (e.g.: Fijian [b} is always pronounced /mb/, [d]is always pronounced /nd/.) I don’t know of any other examples of this in French.

In Arabic, [m] and [b} sometimes exchange places. Makkah was originally Bakkah (Psalms 84:6, Qur’ân 3:96).

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/names-for-the-days-of-the-week/59842.md?page=4)