Another thread here reminded me of something that’s always puzzled me.
Why do some people consider Sunday the first day of the week, and some the last? You can see this on calendars; some put Sunday at the start, some at the end. Week calculators in many computer systems and languages also count it differently; sometimes Sunday is day 1, sometimes Monday is.
Personally, I used to consider Sunday the first, but a few years ago I had to conclude that I had absolutely no reason to do this, and making it the last made more sense.
So, is there any ‘official’ definition? Or is it a free for all? Does anyone consider Thursday, for instance, the first day of the week?
Sunday is the first day of the week by convention (going back a long, long way). Most standard calendars show Sunday as the first day, though many appointment calendars start with Monday. The reason is that most people have less scheduled on Saturdays and Sundays, so the calendars squish those two days together. As for computer systems, the ones I’m familar with all have Sunday as day 0, Monday as day 1, etc.
IIRC, Sunday is the first day of the week in the US, and the last day of the week in most of Europe. I consider Sunday to be the last day of the week, but my reasoning is more or less totally arbitrary.
I think it makes sense to consider it the last day of the week. For one thing it puts Saturday and Sunday, the whole weekend, on the same week. I hate how they are separated in calendars. We call it “weekend” so I guess it should be at the end.
As far as Thursday goes… other cultures, other methods. In Iran (which is really the only other culture I’m super-familiar with), Friday is the holy day, and generally considered the last day of the week. Saturday starts the week anew.
Funny names for days over there, too.
Saturday = Shanbeh
Sunday = Yekshanbeh
Monday = Doshanbeh
Tuesday = Sehshanbeh
Wednesday = Charshanbeh
Thursday = Panjshanbeh
Friday = Jome’eh
That’s odd (at least imho) because the syllable preceding “Shanbeh” for Sunday through Thursday are the numbers one through five. Think of it as having Friday, Saturday, Onesaturday, Twosaturday, Threesaturday, Foursaturday, and Fivesaturday. The upside is that it makes it a lot easier to learn the days of the week for a language student. The downside, I guess, would be that none of that except the first two sentences had anything to do with the original topic…
In China Sunday is the last day of the week. The days are basically numbered. Xingqiyi means the first (yi) day of the week (qingqi). This system lasts until Sunday, which would be xingqiqi except two qis in a row sounds dumb so it’s xingqitian or xingqiri. Tian and ri both mean day; one is for written form and one for spoken.
Y’know, looking at this, I suppose you could consider Sunday the first day too… sort of a zero day. Ack! Essentially I’ve contributed nothing.
You’re in luck! There is an official definition, by the international standardisation organisation ISO
The pertinent standard is called ISO8601:2000, but unfortunately they charge CHF104.00 to download it (~USD60). There are however other resources available where it is quoted, eg A Summary of the International Standard Date and Time Notation:
Unfortunately ISO8601 has had very limited influence on (especially) the US. (As have most international standards originating elsewhere.)
As has been noted above Europe follows the convention of ISO (in this case).
My first thought on this is of the Jewish tradition, which has maintained for thousands of years that the seventh day, the day of rest, is Saturday, aka Sabado and other Sabbath-related words in other languages.
If our seven-day week stems strictly from Judaism, then Sunday should be the first day. However, if the seven-day week was a convention used by the entire region, and let’s say the Canaanite week started on Monday, then it seems fair to let the Euros follow that tradition instead. You could argue this belongs in another forum, but IMHO, I’d like to know the extent of the seven-day week beyond the Jewish tribes.
You can check out days of the week in various languages in the thread Names for Days of the Week, where you can see that in Arabic, Sunday is “Day One” and in Hebrew Sunday is “First Day.” In Persian, shanbeh just means ‘day’, so yekshanbeh for Sunday also means ‘Day One’. (Saturday is just called ‘Day’ with no qualification? Don’t ask me to explain that!)
The Basques, Hungarians, Lithuanians, and Russians all think the week starts with Monday. I think the Seventh-Day Adventists in those countries spend a lot of time explaining why their seventh day is Saturday.
But in Greek Monday is Deutera, the second day. So there!
I’ve always considered Monday to be the first day of the week. Otherwise I would only have a one day weekend (although I would gain a one-day “weekbeginning”).
I always considered the weekends the “ends” of the week like the ends of a pole, or sort of a buffer to the week. One comes before, and one comes after the week. (like a start bit and a stop bit for you computer people out there.) This of course would make Sunday the first day.
However, I could have formed this opinion because I was always told while growing up that Sunday was the first day.