Wednesday, July 2, 2008

How did the days of the week get their Names?



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 a 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 day or every fifth day. The babylonians decided that it should be every seventh day. On this day they didn't 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).
When the Egyptians adopted the seven-day week, they named the days after five planets, the sun, and the moon. The Romans used the Egyptian names for their days of the week: the day of the sun, of the moon, of the planet Mars, of Mercury, of Jupiter, of Venus, and of Saturn.
We got our names for the days not from the Romans but from the Anglo-Saxons, who called most of the days after their own Gods, which were roughly the same as the Gods of the Romans. The day of the sun became Sunnandaeg, or Sunday. The day of the moon was called Monandaeg, or Monday. The day of the Mars became the day of Tiw, who was their God of war. This became Tiwesdaeg, or tuesday. Instead of Mercury's name, that of the God Woden was given to Wednesday. The Romans day of Jupiter, the thunderer, became the day of the thunder god Thor, and this became Thursday. The next day was named for Frigg, the wife of their God Odin, and so we have the Friday. The day of Saturn became Saeternsdaeg, a translation from the Romans, and then Saturday.
A day, by the way, used to be counted as the space between the sunrise and sunset. The Romans counted it as from midnight to midnight, the most modern nations use this method.
-: Thanks :-

No comments: