Ancient and ArchaeologyΒ permalink
Why Saturday?
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Darrenatwork (U11744656) on Friday, 27th March 2009
Why, of all the day's of the week, is Saturday named after a Roman god? Sunday and Monday are named after the sun and moon and Tuesday to Friday are named after Germanic god?
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Message 2
Posted by irene (U2450323) on Friday, 27th March 2009
I thought they all were - eg. monday,(lunedi) yes the moon, but tuesday (martedi) the god Mars, wednesday (mercoledi) the god Mercury, thursday (giovedi) the god Jove, friday (venerdi) - the godess Venus. Not sure about Sunday (domenica).So there you go.
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Message 3
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Friday, 27th March 2009
The names of the days in the Germanic languages follow closely those of the Latinate languages:
--Monday - "moon day", a straight translation from the Latin "lunae dies"
--Tuesday - "Tiw's day", a Germanic interpretation of the Latin "Martis dies" (Mars's day), with Tiw/Tyr being the Germanic equivalent to Mars.
--Wednesday - "Woden's day", Woden being associated with the Roman Mercury, hence the connection with the Latin "mercurii dies"
--Thursday - "Thunor's day", with Thunor being the Old English equivalent of Thor. Thor, being the god of thunder, is associated with the Roman Jupiter - "iovis dies" in Latin.
--Friday - "Fri.g's day", with Fri.gg being the Germanic equivalent of Venus - hence the Latin "Veneris dies"
--Saturday - "Saturn's day", oddly named in English after the direct Roman/Latin name. In Norse languages, the name for Saturday comes from the Norse word for "bath" - Saturday was bath day in Old Norse times"
--Sunday - "sun day", a straight translation of the Latin "dies solis".
It seems that a couple of milennia ago, the Roman practice of naming their days caught on with the speakers of Germanic languages and they either copied the direct name (as in Saturday) or just used their equivalent god in the name of the day). -
Message 4
Posted by peteratwar (U10629558) on Friday, 27th March 2009
Unfortunately everyday is Bath day for me!!!! My Wife insists!!!
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Message 5
Posted by LairigGhru (U5452625) on Friday, 27th March 2009
Better explain water economy to her.
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Message 6
Posted by colinclout (U1717776) on Saturday, 28th March 2009
Possibly because there was no direct Germanic God relatable to Saturnus. In all his aspects as a God of bounty (as in harvests), Father of Iove who is the former Father God(Roman tradition adopted some of the Theogony - but I'm not sure about this part), he has no counterpart. Woten/Odin has a father, but the father doesn't have matching attributes to Saturnus
So like in English in other cases when there is no pre-existing concept, they took the name directly as a loan-word. -
Message 7
Posted by Haesten (U4770256) on Saturday, 28th March 2009
The pagan Anglo-Saxons are thought to have had only 6 days in their week, obviously the Christian Bible saying God made the world in 7 days caused a problem, so they added Saturday direct from the Roman church and Latin "Saturnus" OE "Sæternes"+dæg (day).
They did the same with their genealogies, where as the pagan line descended from Woden they got around this by making Woden a descendant of Adam and Eve.
OE Sunnandæg (Sunday) is not a direct loan word of the Latin "dies solis", same with O.E. Monandæg (Monday) - Latin "Lunæ dies". -
Message 8
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Saturday, 4th April 2009
Re: Message 3 and 7.
Stoggler and Haesten,
thank you for your enlightenment. I learned from it.
Warm regards to both,
Paul. -
Message 9
Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Friday, 10th April 2009
leading on
is the european week followed throughout the world ??
is there a five day week followed by two rest days - or at least a sabbath
in china do they have a friday lads night ?
is there a rest day in islamic countries ??
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Message 10
Posted by colinclout (U1717776) on Sunday, 12th April 2009
If the question is so wide ranging in the ancient and archeology section, I would first say that before the modern European 7-day week, the romans had an 8-day week (and at least one other concurrent system) that was still in use in the first century AD. Dies Solis and such were used later (and more figurately - the Romans were not a metaphoric people).
The Greeks probably didn't have a 7 day week, but I'm not sure. The Attican (Athenian) dialect, for example, was different from the Laconian (Spartan) dialect and they also had different calendars (as did other Greek States).
Someone who is familiar with an Indic language can correct me, but in modern times, the religious calendars in India (which are still used to determine many holidays) seem to have a mechanism that works like a week, but it is really 15 days long - the calendar splits a 30 day month into two halves. They do use a civil calendar in India that matches the European week, but not for religious purposes. There is also a Bahai calendar, fairly new, that uses another system - but I've never seen the calendar.
The Yoruba religion of Africa (I recall an article in the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ last year about a woman from the UK who was a high priestess) seems to use either a five day or four day week.
Jews and Muslims do not use the same calendar, but their respective concept of the week is the same - it starts on Sunday, not Monday - although I believe that Muslims consider the 6th day holy and Jews consider the 7th day holy.
Modern China/Korea/et cetera use the European week, but most of them formerly used a lunar/solar calendar that simply didn't have the concept of a week. Where a European holiday might be 'on the first Saturday in June', the traditional Asian calendars might have 'the 5th day of the 5th month' (which is an actual holiday). The Chinese olympics took place on 8 August 2008 because of the date (8-8-08).
But Japan has conformed so well to the seven day week that the people have changed some of their traditional holidays - I've seen it referred to as the 'Happy Monday System' - so that many holidays ensure that people have a Sunday to Monday 3 day holiday.
I'm not sure about lads' night in China - but because of birth rates there are a lot more men than women, so they must be doing something. -
Message 11
Posted by nerever (U13949770) on Wednesday, 27th May 2009
I heard that saturday was named after an ancient hebrew figure EL who was known as the god of SATURN and saturday is apparantly the most religious day for jews as sunday is to christians
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