days of the week

[miriam_e]

To the ancient Greeks it would have seemed spooky that the quarters of a lunar month divided neatly into 7-day weeks and that there were exactly 7 known astronomical bodies (the sun, moon, and 5 visible planets), so they gave each day of the week a corresponding name. Those 5 planets were named for some of their gods. It's not important what they were because the Romans changed the names to their own equivalent gods, but keeping basically the same references. Again it isn't really important what they were (except for Saturn) because the Germanic/Norse people changed the names once more to their own gods (Tiu, Woden, Thor, Freya), except for Saturn, which they kept. So this is what we ended up with after this mixed up re-re-rewriting of history:

• Saturn's day
  
• Sun's day
  
• Moon's day
  
• Tiu's day
  
• Wodin's day
  
• Thor's day
  
• Freya's day

Silly, huh?

Comments

[flemco.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but only interesting if you're solely focusing on the English words for days of the week.