What Do the Names of the Days of the Week Mean?

An answer to this question is necessarily closely linked to the language in question. Whereas most languages use the same names for the months (with a few Slavonic languages as notable exceptions), there is great variety in names that various languages use for the days of the week. A few examples will be given here.

Except for the sabbath, Jews simply number their week days.

A related method is partially used in Portuguese and Russian:

English	Portuguese	Russian	Meaning of Russian name
Monday	segunda-feira	ponedelnik	After “do-nothing”
Tuesday	terça-feira	vtornik	Second
Wednesday	quarta-feira	sreda	Middle
Thursday	quinta-feira	chetverg	Fourth
Friday	sexta-feira	pyatnitsa	Fifth
Saturday	sabado	subbota	Sabbath
Sunday	domingo	voskresenye	Resurrection

Most Latin-based languages connect each day of the week with one of the seven “planets” of the ancient times: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. French, for example, uses:

English	French	“Planet”
Monday	lundi	Moon
Tuesday	mardi	Mars
Wednesday	mercredi	Mercury
Thursday	jeudi	Jupiter
Friday	vendredi	Venus
Saturday	samedi	Saturn
Sunday	dimanche	(Sun)

The link with the sun has been broken in French, but Sunday was called dies solis (day of the sun) in Latin.

It is interesting to note that also some Asiatic languages (for example, Hindi, Japanese, and Korean) have a similar relationship between the week days and the planets.

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.

Regards,

Jyoti.