YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

October 8, 2008

How the days of week came to be called.

In this column of September 17, I explained about the relativity between the names of planets and the order of days of week. As far as Japanese names are concerned I need not say any more, but I said I would explain at a later date about the English way of calling the days of week such as Wednesday or Friday that seem not related to the names of planet. And then I was pressed by mails to write about them soon, and so here is my second commentary about them.

Let me take French as representing Latin languages, in which from Sunday to Saturday are: dimanche, lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, among which only the phonetic difference from planetary names are dimanche and samedi. The rest of the days correspond to English way of Moon (Lunar), Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus. Sunday was called in two ways in Latin, dies Solis (day of Sun) and dies dominica (day of Lord), from which the latter was chosen because the country was faithful in Catholics. For Saturday, sabbath (day of rest) was chosen to be called samedi.

On the contrary, in Anglo-Saxonism English or Proto-Germanic German, they phonetically sound similar like Sunday/Sonntag, Monday/Montag, Tuesday/Dienstag, Wednesday/Mittwoch, Thursday/Donnerstag, Friday/Freitag, Saturday/Sonnabend or Samstag, from which etymology is presumed to be conjugated.There will be no question as to Sunday and Monday both in English and German, because they derive right from Sun and Moon. Let us study the rest of days in English alone.

Tuesday was Tiwesdaeg (day of Tiw) in ancient English language used from 8th to 11th century. Germanic peoples who lived in pre-Christian years along the Baltic coastline from the southern part of Scandinavian Peninsula had an inherent Scandinavian mythology. If you peruse the mythology, it is very much interesting. I do not go into details here but I recommend you to read it someday. Tiw, Tiu or Tyr is a dauntless god of battle in the mythology to correspond to the war god Mars in Roman mythology, which may explain why Latin mardi (Tuesday) in French became “the day of Tiw” (Tuesday) in Gelman language.

Now on Wednesday. It was Wodnesdaeg (day of Woden) in ancient English. Woden was a very powerful god in Scandinavian myth but the story is quite different from that of Greece or Rome so as unable to compare them. After all as a result, it became Wednesday after having made corresponded to Mercury of Roman mythology.

Thursday was derived from “day of Thor” in ancient English. Thor was a god of thunder and eldest son of Woden. Actually a capital letter of “Thor” is not there in current English alphabet. He may correspond to Zeus and Jupiter of Greek and Roman mythology. Incidentally, war god Tiw was a second son of Woden and a brother of Thor.

Friday was Frigedaeg (day of Freier) in ancient English. Freier was a wife of Woden and goddess of love to correspond to Venus of Rome.

Saturday in the last place. It was spelled Saeterdaeg (day of Saturn) in ancient English. This day is particularly after the name of Roman god of agriculture “Saturn” and not connected to any god of Scandinavian myth. Latin language did not use the name of Roman god but named it after “day of rest” to call it samedi, while English alone named it after Roman dies Saturni, which is hardly understandable to remain mysterious. For your information, German has two ways of calling Saturday. One is Samstag clearly derived from “Sabbath” and the other is Sonnabend to mean “the night before the day of sun”.

As I think English way of calling the days of week may be a popular subject of conversation, I will make below a list of English names and its meanings together with those of Latin language.

Days of week     Meaning         Days of week          Meaning       (English)             (English)         (Latin)                      (Latin)

Sunday              Sun’s day        dies Solis               Day of Sun

Monday             Moon’s day     dies Lunae             Day of Moon

Tuesday            Tiw’s day         dies Martis             Day of Mars

Wednesday      Woden’s day    dies Mercurii        Day of Mercury

Thursday           Thor’s day        dies Jovis              Day of Jupiter

Friday               Figg’s day         dies Veneris         Day of Venus

Saturday          Saturn’s day       dies Saturni          Day of Saturn

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp