It's all Latin to us...

[rebness]

What started off as a little aside in my previous post became the sort of academic discussion that makes me come over all geeky and very, very happy. So, thanks to the doubly nefarious and splendid input of ozfille, verastar99 and saffronlie, here is more than you ever wanted to know about the naming of the months and the days of the week:

Months of the Year

January -- Janus, the two-headed God o’D00m (I bet he was an Aquarian. Go, us!)
February – After Februa, the Roman festival of purification
March – Mars
April– Aphrodite
May– Maia, the Italian goddess of spring
June– The goddess Juno
July – Julius Caesar
August– Augustus Caesar
September– Seven
October– Eight, duh
November– Nine, ditto
December – Ten, ibid

Days of the Week

English            French            Latin           Nordic

Monday            Lundi               Moon           Moon

Tuesday            Mardi              Mars            Tiw

Wednesday      Mercredi          Mercury       Woden

Thursday          Jeudi                Jupiter           Thor

Friday              Vendredi          Venus           Freya

Saturday          Samedi             Saturn           Saturn

Sunday            Dimanche         "Sun"             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.

ETA: kyuuketsukirui informs me that Japanese also references the sun for Sunday, and the moon for Monday. Dude!

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.

And so there we have it. Most informative LJ around, baby!*

*Possibly sheer hyperbole, and a lie, to boot.

Comments

[verastar99.livejournal.com]

to tack on to your quandry regarding Sunday and how the sun element was lost in the french...

you'll remember that the spanish is Domingo
Italian is Domenica
portugese is also Domingo
Rumanian is Duminica


so the romance root seems to be the common dom/din/dum...hmmm

[rebness.livejournal.com]

Hmm...indeed. I don't quite understand how French "lost" the original root, while maintaining the original names for the other days.

As far as I know-- and I may be wrong-- "dimanche" doesn't point to any specific clue about its origins in French. Perhaps it's a mutation of one of the other Romantic names used there?

It could be that it is closer to something in Old French, or even the Galician tongue. Now I have to find that out!

[verastar99.livejournal.com]

i still hold the french root as being completely tied in with those D roots...its the romance root that ties it.

just the origin baffles me...i mean the sun is Sol, or derivitive...

its not really connected to Dios, or Deu...hmmm

[rebness.livejournal.com]

No, you're right... I think it is something to do with the similarities in the Latin languages. I'm just not sure where, though.

French for sun is soleil and day is jour. God is Dieu and the nearest thing I can think of, unless "di" was Old French for day or something. Hmm.