The Anglo-Saxon word for Saturday was Saeternesdaeg, as attested in (among others) the Euangelium secundum Iohannem (Gospel of St. John in West Saxon).
Planetary hours. Every planet had an hour that it “ruled” in the Roman belief system, but there weren’t (obviously) enough planets to fill out the 24-hour day (or even a 12-hour half-day). So they cycled through. Each day is named for the planet that rules its first hour. So the cycle starts with the Sun, so the first day is Sunday. By the time they get through enough iterations of the cycle to get to the 1st hour of the next day, the Moon rules that. Then Mars, then Mercury, then Jupiter, then Venus, then Saturn. And at that point, the whole cycle comes back around to the Sun.
Thanks for the link. Although we Geminis are known for our skepticism of pseudo-science, it still makes for interesting reading.
The Babylonians named each of the days after one of the five planetary bodies known to them and after the Sun and the Moon, a custom later adopted by the Romans. For a time the Romans used a period of eight days in civil practice, but in AD 321 Emperor Constantine established the seven-day week in the Roman calendar and designated Sunday as the first day of the week. Subsequent days bore the names Moon’s-day, Mars’s-day, Mercury’s-day, Jupiter’s-day, Venus’-day, and Saturn’s-day.
Indeed. From my understand (and I could be VERY wrong here), what we commonly refer to as the “Norse Gods” were used by many Germanic Pagan people with minor name differences. Regarding the days of the week, a good example of this is Wednesday, which is not based on Odin, the source of “Onsdag” which is used here in Sweden, but instead Woden, an Anglo Saxon God roughly equivalent to Odin.
As to why we refer to them as “Norse”, my guess is that as the Nordic region converted to Christianity a lot later than everyone else they held on to them for a lot longer.
Thoughts?
One interesting tidbit in the article linked to above was that when Jews first came to Rome in the 1st c. BCE, the Romans linked the Jewish God to Saturn, so it was appropriate that their holy day should fall on Saturday.
In Latin it was Dies Saturni, ‘Day of Saturn’, hence the French samedi. The Spanish and Portuguese Sábado, the Romanian Sâmbătă, and the Italian Sabato come from Sabbata Dies (Day of the Sabbath).
According to wiktionary at least, Samedi comes from dies Sabbati, not dies Saturni.
Yes, in Old French samedi was Sambedi, from Vulgar Latin Sambati dies, meaning day of the Sabbath.
Only one children’s encyclo I read said Saturday was named after Surtur, the Norse fire god. The rest said it was the latin Saturn.
After thorough consideration and analysis of the myths of the different developed peoples of ancient times, I came to the conclusion that all the religions originated from humanity’s study and attempt to fix time and the seasons. The weal and woe, or the so-called fortune of people, has been determined by the seasons (i.e. the weather) since the earliest times. All the main mythical deities, namely Odin (Old Norse), YHWH (Hebrew), Brahma (Hinduism), Anu (Sumerian), Ptah (Egyptian) and Ollin Tonatiuh “Movement of the Sun” (Aztecs), symbolize the sum-total of the year’s seasons. The stone circles, that were initially meant to divide the year into seasons, were apparently the cradles of the various faiths!
Congratulations, you have invented a theory of mythology that has been discredited for a century already. Tell the ghost of Max Müller hello for me.
I prefer Origine de tous les cultes (1795).