English names of days are weird. You have the day of the sun and the moon, ok. Fine. Then Tuesday - Friday are norse gods (Tyr, Odin, Thor, Freya), but what’s Saturday doing there?! Saturn is a completely different pantheon!
In Czech we have it simple - Monday is “after Sunday”, then there’s Secondday, Middleday, Fourthday, Fifthday, Sabbath and Not-working-day.
The Norse called Saturday “Laugerdagr” which translates to washing day/laundry day. They apparently thought doing the wash was equal to worship of their gods. Which, I don’t totally disagree. (Cleanliness is next to godliness)
The church wasn’t having that though… So they went with the roman God of time. Saturn.
My understanding, though it could be mistaken because I am not a scholar, is that the Germanic peoples were going through and replacing the Roman gods with Norse equivalents. But then they got to Saturn and were like “Hmm, there’s not really a good 1-to-1 match here, so I guess he stays”
The Japanese do it cooler. They’ve got sun, moon, and their classical elements. This can be a fun little rabbit hole when trying to understand machine translated business documents
It’s funny how I was learning Brazilian Portuguese and the days of the week are like Sábado (Saturday), Domingo (Sunday), but then everything starts becoming “days of the fair”, segunda-feira, terça-feira, quarta-feira, quinta-feira, sexta-feira…
And I, an English speaker, have the gall to still find this confusing when it comes to intuitively using non-weekends.
Like “BuT wHiCh DaY iS tHoR’s DaY?!” Asks the Californian who’s never been a Norseman to their knowledge 😂
English names of days are weird. You have the day of the sun and the moon, ok. Fine. Then Tuesday - Friday are norse gods (Tyr, Odin, Thor, Freya), but what’s Saturday doing there?! Saturn is a completely different pantheon!
In Czech we have it simple - Monday is “after Sunday”, then there’s Secondday, Middleday, Fourthday, Fifthday, Sabbath and Not-working-day.
The Norse called Saturday “Laugerdagr” which translates to washing day/laundry day. They apparently thought doing the wash was equal to worship of their gods. Which, I don’t totally disagree. (Cleanliness is next to godliness)
The church wasn’t having that though… So they went with the roman God of time. Saturn.
My understanding, though it could be mistaken because I am not a scholar, is that the Germanic peoples were going through and replacing the Roman gods with Norse equivalents. But then they got to Saturn and were like “Hmm, there’s not really a good 1-to-1 match here, so I guess he stays”
That might be fully untrue though. 😅
The Japanese do it cooler. They’ve got sun, moon, and their classical elements. This can be a fun little rabbit hole when trying to understand machine translated business documents
It’s funny how I was learning Brazilian Portuguese and the days of the week are like Sábado (Saturday), Domingo (Sunday), but then everything starts becoming “days of the fair”, segunda-feira, terça-feira, quarta-feira, quinta-feira, sexta-feira…
And I, an English speaker, have the gall to still find this confusing when it comes to intuitively using non-weekends.
Like “BuT wHiCh DaY iS tHoR’s DaY?!” Asks the Californian who’s never been a Norseman to their knowledge 😂