Have I mentioned I hate this day of the week?

[the_bard]

I’ve heard that the word Tuesday comes from the old Germanic god of battle and strife, Tyr or Tiw. In most Romance languages, it’s called Mars’ Day (martes en español, mardi en français, martedi in italiano), another reference to a deity of warfare not noted for his intellectual prowess

Comments

[ladyofmoonlight]

It's a calque! I wrote an essay on the names for the days of the week in an English class. The old germanic people took the Latin days of the week and then "calqued" them, meaning that they found something with a stongly similar meaning in their own language and used that instead of a direct translation or just using the latinate words. Monday would've been something like Lunus deius or such in Latin, "Moon Day" for us and something similar to "Moon Day" for the old germanic people. Then they translated all the gods over. Mars became Tiw, Mercury became Woden, Zeus became Thor, Venus became Frig, Saturday stayed Saturn (I don't think there was any germanic god close enough to Saturn), and Sunday remained being about God, since Sun and God were pretty similar back then.

Okay, sorry, just had to show off what I remembered (I totally got an A for that). Sorry today sucks for you. I'm a Wednesday person meself :)

[valerie_quinn]

Hmm... I wonder if the same is true for the Japanese. Tuesday is technically fire day. the rest are as follows:

Sunday - sun day
Monday - moon day
Tuesday - fire day
Wendesday - water day
Thursday - tree day
Friday - gold day
Saturday - earth day

[wolfchilde]

Japanese days are so much nicer than Mandarin. In Mandarin it is The Day (Sunday), Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, and Day 6.