How did the days of the week get their names?
The planets have given the week days their names following this order: Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Sun. English has retained the original planets in the names for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. For the four other days, however, the names of Anglo-Saxon or Nordic gods have replaced the Roman gods that gave name to the planets. Thus, Tuesday is named after Tiw, Wednesday is named after Woden, Thursday is named after Thor, and Friday is named after Freya. Most Latin-based languages also connect each day of the week with one of the seven “planets” of the ancient times. Except for the Sabbath, Jews simply number their week days. A related method is partially used in Portuguese and Russian. Why the particular order of the days. That’s not easy: If you order the “planets” according to either their presumed distance from Earth (assuming the Earth to be the centre of the universe) or their period of revolution around the Earth, you arrive at this order: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun
There was a time in the early history of man when the days had no names! The reason was quite simple. Men had not invented the week. In those days, the only division of times was the month, and there were too many days in the month for each of them to have a separate name. But when men began to build cities, they wanted to have a special day on which to trade, a market day. Sometimes these market days were fixed at every tenth day, sometimes every seventh or every fifth day. The Babylonians decided that it should be every seventh day. On this day they didnt work, but met for trade and religious festivals. The Jews followed their example, but kept every seventh day for religious purposes. In this way the week came into existence. It was the space between market days. The Jews gave each of the seven days a name, but it was really a number after the Sabbath day (which was Saturday). For example, Wednesday was called the fourth day (four days after Saturday).
The names of our days came to us from the Saxons and Norsemen of ancient Europe. At one time the name of each day may have stood for both a tribal god and a heavenly body. Seven, to these early people, was a magic number. So they allotted seven days to a week. Sunday, of course, was the day sacred to the golden sun. Monday was the day to pay homage to the moon. Tuesday was named for Tiw, the Norse god of war. Wednesday was Woden’s day, Woden was the messenger god who corresponded to the Roman Mercury. Thursday was Thorns day the hero god of the thunderbolts. Friday was sacred to Freya, the Norse goddess of beauty. And Saturday was named for Saturn, the deposed old king of the tribal gods.
moon to be planets as well and so that gave them seven planets. Hey, guess what, there are also seven days of the week. What do you suppose are the odds that having seven planets, at least in their ignorant minds, has something to do with the names for our seven days of the week? About as much as Lennon and McCartney had to do with their misinformation about there being eight days in the week. Seven also happened to be considered a magic number to the ancients and the fact that there were seven planets in the skies made it seem quite natural to have seven days in the week. The names of our days of the week as we know them in the language of choice, English, derives from the ancient names the Saxons and Norse gave to the days of the week. Sunday should seem rather obvious to even someone with the IQ of George W. Bush. The “Sun” part of Sunday kind of gives it away: it was named in honor of the sun. Perhaps slightly less obvious at first, but the provider of a “duh!” moment when you thin
