I assume others already know about this, but given that the original Addams Family TV show came out in the mid-1960s, it took me a while to get the relevance of Wednesday’s name:
Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace. Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go.
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living.
But the child that is born on Sabbath day,
Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.
Although Tuesday has been used as a girl’s name, presumably because it suggests “grace,” only twisted people like Gomez and Morticia would name a child Wednesday.
The actress Tuesday Weld was already famous when the television show started showing. Although the name of Wednesday came at least partly from the nursery rhyme (first recorded in 1838), I wonder if there was an additional source. I wonder if the show’s creators also considered it a joke on Tuesday Weld’s name.
for the 1964 television series, Charles Addams named Wednesday based on the Monday’s Child nursery rhyme line: “Wednesday’s child is full of woe.” Actress and poet Joan Blake, an acquaintance of Charles Addams, offered the idea for the name.
I don’t think I knew about Tuesday Weld when the show came out (I was 9 years old), but by my teenage years I probably did, and that was my first guess too, because I hadn’t heard of the nursery rhyme at that point.
That’s what the Wiki page for Wednesday Addams says, but the Addams Family page disagrees. Here’s how Linda H. Davis’ biography of Charles Addams tells it.
The year was 1963. … came a set of large cloth Addams Family dolls made by Aboriginals Ltd. A television show based on the cartoons was also in the works, and Addams was to name the dolls so that they could be tied to the series. …
With the exception of “Wednesday” for the daughter full of woe, which Aboriginals chose, Addams named each character.
The Wednesday page cites a letter Joan Blake wrote to The New Yorker, which was printed on July 30, 2018.
I met Addams in New York more than fifty years ago. I lived in North Carolina, but had travelled to the city for a court case involving the custody of my children. I was staying with my college roommate, and she threw a large party, which Addams attended. I was so depressed that I sat on the couch all evening. Addams sat down beside me and asked what was wrong. I told him. He took my arm, walked me to the elevator, and took me to P. J. Clarke’s. He made me laugh and told me that the Addams Family was being made into a television show, and that he had no name for the little girl. I said, “Wednesday—Wednesday’s child is full of woe.” And Wednesday became her name.
Since the doll’s name preceded the series I doubt the validity of this 55-year-old memory. Memory is always more colorful than research.
Before the internet, before computers, mashing names together like Tuesday March the Second was a huge game, with zillions of newspaper columnists making these up as well as late night hosts and Laugh-In. In fact, the first newspaper hit I found was from 1968, so probably stolen from Laugh-In.
I’ve seen some attempts recently - search brings up a dozen threads here. Including this one. There were a couple threads devoted to the topic, but they didn’t get much traction. It’s a great game, but maybe life was just simpler in the old days. OTOH, you could create dirty name combos today that wouldn’t go public in 1968.
