“Monday/Lundi * Tuesday/Mardi * Wednesday/Mercredi * Thursday/Jeudi * Friday/Vendredi * Satuday/Samedi Sunday/Dimanche
Our seven-day week is a straight inheritance from very ancient Babylonian and Jewish traditions that took the seven planets as one of the ordering principles of humanity and divinity. The main alternatives were the Egyptian ten-day week, the Germano-Celtic nine-night week and the eight-day week for the Etruscans. The latter was inherited by the Romans, for it allowed for a specific market-day, which enabled country-dwellers to come to the cities and sell fruit and vegetables (which lasted only eight days). During Julius Caesar’s calendar reforms the seven-day week was introduced to the Near East, though it ran alongside the old Etruscan traditions until the time Constantine.
And some time during that period, between 200 and 600 AD, the current charming muddle of English names was hatched out, part honouring the Roman pantheon and part the Norse-German deities. For Monday is moon day, Tuesday is the day to Tiw/Tyr’s day (the heroic Teutonic sky god), Wednesday is Woden/Odin’s (the Teutonic/Norse god of knowledge and war), Thursday is the day of Thor (the Teutonic smith-god of thunder)), Friday is the day of Frija/Freyr (the Teutonic goddess of fertility), Saturday is Saturn (the father of Zeus)’s day, and Sunday is of course the sun’s day.
The same process happened in France, ossifying that peculiar junction point between Roman paganism and the new Christian order. So the French have Lundi (from the Latin dies Lunae, or moon day), Mardi (dies Martis, or Mars day), Mercredi (dies Mercurii, or Mercury day), Jeudi (dies Jovis, or Jupiter day), Vendredi (dies Veneris, Venus day), Samedi (dies Saturni, Saturn day) and Dimanche (dies Dominicus, day of the lord).
In the well-ordered Christian state of Byzantium, all these pagan relics were ditched in favor of days 1, 2, 3 and 4, followed by Paraskene (preparation), Sabbaton and finally Kyriaki (God’s day). These remain the days in modern Greek.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
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