Salve citizens of Waterloo, I Gaius Lucius Agrippa welcome you back once again to the Forum Romanum! On this day of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, I bring to you another article in our befitting Acta Diurna column. Today, I speak of time itself, like the flowing rivers of the Tiber it goes continuously and as surely as the cycle of the sun and moon, and of course the days of the week. Appropriately, in this article I present to you, the origins of the names of each of the days of the week. Many of you may not know, but the seven day week and their names trace their origins all the way back to the glorious Roman Empire.
Originally, we followed the eight-day nundinal cycle, a period of 8 market days of a week. This was marked by the letters A to H on the calendar. This formed the basis for much of roman life prior to the adaptation of the seven day calendar. The market day was the day when citizens of Rome from the country would come into the city to sell their produce, while the citizens from within would purchase food & needs for the entire week. In 45BC, then Consul Gaius Julius Caesar took steps to reform the Roman calendar, shortly after the conquest of Egypt. It is said that this is the turning point in which the 8-day week started to diminish in popularity, in favour of what soon to be known as the 7-day week. It is worth noting that these two systems were used simultaneously with each other, and a full switch did not come to be until much later.
The names of the week on the other hand can be traced much further. In a culture deeply seated in religion and the pantheon of gods, the days found their names from the gods. The ancient Mesopotamians were the first to associate and name each of their days with that of a god. Later on, the Greeks referred to this as theon hemerai (days of the gods) and as you can imagine, had their own equivalents of the names. Shortly upon the introduction of the seven day system in Rome, we followed this same system, and named each of the days according to the gods. The modern English equivalents and their original Roman counterparts are as follows: Sunday or dies Solis was named after Sol, the god of the sun; Monday or dies Lunae, named after Luna, divine embodiment of the Moon; Tuesday was the day of Mars, or dies Martis; Wednesday was the day of Mercury, originally known as dies Mercurii; Thursday was named after Jupiter King of Gods, and was called dies lovis; Friday was named after the fair Venus, originally called dies Veneris; and Saturday for Saturnus, known as dies Saturni.
Many of you may say that the original names of the seven day week are incredibly different in English from their original Latin counterparts, save for a few such as dies Solis for Sunday, or dies Saturni for Sunday. It goes without saying that the word “dies” is the Latin word for day, and each of the names roughly translates to “Day of”. The names themselves however, underwent many changes at the hands of Germanic tribes. Many German tribes south of the Danube river and within Rome’s provinces adopted the names of the days, but converted them to their own culture and religion. By the process known as Interpretatio germanica, many of the Germanic people identified the Roman gods with the names of their own deities. As such the days of the week had their own Germanic equivalents, which is a lot more similar to the names of the modern days of the week.
-
Sunday – Dies Solis changed to Sunnandaeg, the Germanic Sunna, equivalent of Sol
-
Monday – Dies Luna had the equivalent Monandaeg from Máni, the Germanic god of the moon
-
Tuesday – Dies Martis was changed to Tiwesdaeg; the German equivalent Mars was known as Tiwaz or Tyr
-
Wednesday – Dies Mercurii changed to Wodan’s day or Wodensdaeg (or better known in modern times from the northern Germanic equivalent as the god Odin)
-
Thursday – Dies lovis for Jupiter transformed into Day of Donag or Dunresdaeg (also better known in modern times in its northern Germanic equivalent as Thor)
-
Friday – Dies Veneris for Venus became Frigedaeg from the Germanic goddess Frija or Frigg
-
Saturday – Saturnus, which had no Germanic equivalent, was kept in its original form.
Many of these Germanic equivalents found their way through time, and evolved into what is known as the modern days of the week. Exploring other languages, Romance languages in particular which were derived from Latin, keeps many of the original names such as the modern Spanish word for Tuesday: “Martes” which is much closer to the original dies martis. Regardless of the passage of time, it is easy to see that the names of the days have their roots in Rome.
Leave a Reply