In English, the days of the week are named for Norse gods (or the pantheon)… All except Saturday.
Sunday… The sun
Monday… The moon
Tuesday… Tew/Tiw, Norse god of war and justice
Wednesday… Wodin (Odin), the all father
Thursday… Thor, God of lightning and thunder
Friday… Freyja, the lady, goddess of love.
Except Saturday. The Norse called Saturday laundry day. Laugerdagr. Great word actually…
But the English wouldn’t have it so they went with the roman God Saturn for Saturday.
Lørdag is bath day. The vikings would bathe on Saturdays. Also laundry. I suspect it needed to be a tradition in order for people to get into the cold water without complaining.
The English Saturday is from latin, roman god Saturn.
But the English wouldn’t have it so they went with the roman God Saturn for Saturday.
And what makes this even weirder is that in the Roman languages all days are Roman Gods EXCEPT Saturday and Sunday. But there is an explanation for both these things, and it becomes quite clear when you know the days in some Latin language, e.g. in Spanish it’s:
Lunes: Moon (Luna) day
Martes: Mars (Marte) day
Miércoles: Mercury (Mercurio) day
Jueves: Jupiter day
Viernes: Venus day
The interesting is the obvious conversion:
Moon day -> Monday
God of war: Mars -> Tew -> Tuesday
God of thunder: Jupiter -> Thor -> Thursday
God of love: Venus -> Freya -> Friday
Wednesday should have been Hermsday for Hermod who’s the God of messages equivalent to Mercury, but I think they thought it was bad not having a day for the allfather and gave him Wednesday.
What about the weekend? In Spanish (and most other roman languages) they are:
Sábado: Latinization of Jew’s Shabat
Domingo: Dominicus, i.e. the day of the Lord
As you can see at some point Latin languages started using their new christian religion to name days, but before that those days were:
Saturni: Saturn day -> Saturday
Soli: Sun (Sol) day -> Sunday
So as you can see the days of the week in English are mostly the days of the week from ancient Rome, just adapted to a different culture.
But why didn’t they change Saturday and Sunday? My guess is that because the equivalent of Saturn is Freyr the name would have been too similar to his sister’s day Friday. As for Sunday, in earlier Roman history the Sun wasn’t an important god so Sunday might actually reference the sun and not the deity so no need to convert it. And in later periods the Sun represented Roman imperialism and centralized power so they wouldn’t want that one changed. But these are just guesses from my part, if anyone knows the real reason I would love to hear it.
In English, the days of the week are named for Norse gods (or the pantheon)… All except Saturday. Sunday… The sun Monday… The moon Tuesday… Tew/Tiw, Norse god of war and justice Wednesday… Wodin (Odin), the all father Thursday… Thor, God of lightning and thunder Friday… Freyja, the lady, goddess of love.
Except Saturday. The Norse called Saturday laundry day. Laugerdagr. Great word actually…
But the English wouldn’t have it so they went with the roman God Saturn for Saturday.
Lørdag is bath day. The vikings would bathe on Saturdays. Also laundry. I suspect it needed to be a tradition in order for people to get into the cold water without complaining.
The English Saturday is from latin, roman god Saturn.
And what makes this even weirder is that in the Roman languages all days are Roman Gods EXCEPT Saturday and Sunday. But there is an explanation for both these things, and it becomes quite clear when you know the days in some Latin language, e.g. in Spanish it’s:
The interesting is the obvious conversion:
Wednesday should have been Hermsday for Hermod who’s the God of messages equivalent to Mercury, but I think they thought it was bad not having a day for the allfather and gave him Wednesday.
What about the weekend? In Spanish (and most other roman languages) they are:
As you can see at some point Latin languages started using their new christian religion to name days, but before that those days were:
So as you can see the days of the week in English are mostly the days of the week from ancient Rome, just adapted to a different culture.
But why didn’t they change Saturday and Sunday? My guess is that because the equivalent of Saturn is Freyr the name would have been too similar to his sister’s day Friday. As for Sunday, in earlier Roman history the Sun wasn’t an important god so Sunday might actually reference the sun and not the deity so no need to convert it. And in later periods the Sun represented Roman imperialism and centralized power so they wouldn’t want that one changed. But these are just guesses from my part, if anyone knows the real reason I would love to hear it.
Very cool!