Monday is, of course, one of the days of the week. Have you ever really thought about it? Monday. The Day of the Moon. In Western Civilization, the days of the week are either derived from Latin or the collective Germanic Tribal languages. Interestingly enough, Monday is one of the two days that these three language lines share in common, along with Sunday and Saturday at least in meaning.
Monday — Montag — Lunae (named for the Moon)
Sunday — Sonntag — Solis (named for the Sun)
Saturday – Samstag — Saturni (named for Saturn)
The other four days of the week are where we really see the influence of the lingustic heritage we have as English speakers. While the Romantic languages all base the other days of the week on the names of Roman deities, ours are Nordic ones.
Tuesday is the day named after the Nordic high-god Tyr. This does not translate into German, as Tuesday is called Dienstag, which means Assembly Day. However, the connection to this group is clear from Danish and Swedish as Tirsdag and Tisdag, respectively. In Latin, this day is called Martis, after the god of war, Mars. (of course everyone knows Kronos is the true God of War haha)
Wednesday is Woden’s day, named in honor of the Nordic god Odin. Interestingly enough, in German this day is Mittwoch, meaning mid-week. We see a connection to the Germanic branch as far as the god-name with the Dutch, who call this day “Woensdag”. The Latin name of this day is Mercurii, named in honor of Mercury. This name still lives to this day, note that in Spanish the day is Miercoles.
Thursday is an easy one to decipher. Thor, the Nordic god of thunder, is the namesake of this day. In German, this day is Donnerstag, meaning Thunder-day, which is a reference to him. In Latin, this day is Jovis (Sp: Jueves) referencing Jupitor, also called Jove, the primary god of Roman paganism.
Friday is named after the Goddess Frigg (although there is argument this day is named after Freya). In Latin this day is called Veneris, named for everyones favorite clam-rider: Venus! This is true for Spanish, calling Friday Viernes.
While we are on naming conventions, ever notice that the names of the month don’t outwardly make sense? Sure, you can see how July is named after Julius Caesar, but how does September through December work? From the latin prefixes, these months translate as the Seventh Month through Tenth month, although these are in reality the ninth through twelfth. The answer is simple, my dear Watson! In the old Roman calendar, the year began in March, making December the tenth month!
And now I must retire. Have an enlightening Moon-day!
I enjoyed reading something offbeat, for a change.
Not only is our nomenclature an inter-cultural hodgepodge, so too is our numerical time-keeping system. To wit:
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p>7 days in a week
52. 14 weeks in a year
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p>Compare that with, say, the Maya:
20 days in a tun
18 tuns in a year (5 days of religious meaning at the end)
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p>Though Thomas Jefferson and Revolutionary France both advocated for decimal time-keeping, it never caught on.
A week is religious per the first chapter of Genesis.
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p>The year is simply solar and a metric-like system wouldn’t work. Having for example, 10-hour days, 10-day weeks, 10 week months, and 10-month years would throw off our seasons and daylight hours. Time is a naturally occuring phenomenon, but once we’ve cleared the revolutions of the sun threshold we do refer to decades, centuries, and millenia.
Well, internal divisions of the day are entirely arbitrary.
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p>Figure 100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes her hour, 10 hours per day. 100,000 seconds per day. Our current system has 86,400 seconds per day, so that’s a notable but not impossible change.
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p>The only natural idea is 365 days per year. One could argue that the month is linked to lunar cycles, but in all honesty that hasn’t held water since we went to our 31/30/28/sometimes 29 wacky system. I prefer 18 * 20 + 5.
… all the tempo markings in all sheet music. đ I think you’d have to use differing names, otherwise every time I read units of ‘beats per minute’ or ‘km per hr’ on something, I’d be left wondering ‘Was this written pre- or post-conversion?’
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p>I had heard an anecdote from a science-type person where there was an archeological find (long time ago – wish I had a cite) where some prehistoric people marked off units that were close to (but a little bit shorter than) months. The scientists of the time were befuddled as to how these people came up with this… until a woman archeologist (of which there were very very very few at the time) had to explain it too them.
just get a metricnome. đ
to the tempi ordinarii.
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p>Allegro, Adagio, Andante, and Allegretto used to be enough.
… historical study, but these markings seem to change with time. In particular, I find that people take the tempo Andant quite quickly for the context of it’s literal translation: ‘at ease’. OTH, it’s difficult to misinterperate allegro con brio! or allegro con fuoco!. Personally, when I write, I indicate approximate bpm. I once wrote a piece that was based on a clock so the marking was “half note = 60 (strict!)”.
In his volume on the Beethoven sonatas, Rosen claims that these tempos acquired a precise meaning in the latter half of the 18th century.
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p>Then the adverbs took over.
… do a physical survey of antique metronomes from the era to see if particular bpm markings are consistently associated with the ‘standard’ verbal tempi.
It would require a time machine. The metronome was not really available until 1812. (Thank you for this opportunity to appear more erudite than I am.)
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p>Rosen has an interesting discussion of a theme and variations (I believe from a Mozart piano concerto) marked Allegretto. The time values halve with each successive variation. Too slow and the start drags. Too fast and you get rushed mud at the end. You can almost use that to set a metronome marking. He asserts that Allegretto has a fixed range of M. values.
… inference for my taste to state so definitive an assertion. I wonder if he accounted for any ‘drift’ over time because I actually think that the modern (or even the 20th century) ear has acclimated to faster tempi in general. Among many reasons, I think the fact that instrumentalists seem to be able to accomplish more than they used to probably contributed to it.
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p>(Anecdotes: When Habeneck (sp?) premiered Beethoven 5 in Paris (1821 I think) the orchestra canceled the date multiple times because the players were having trouble getting it together. Now you wouldn’t even need to be a professional orchestra to be able to play it. Similarly, I remember a story about Stravinsky wandering around some famous music school one day and hearing a student positively rip through something he had written. He wrote it to be very difficult to play on purpose (he wanted a ‘stressed-out’ sound) and threw up his hands at the the fact that this student was getting through it as if it were an medium difficulty etude.)
…that internal divisions of the day are dependent upon the rotation of the earth as well. Time measurements are tied to space measurements in terms of latitiude/longitude. Besides, I can think of no compelling reason whatsoever to tinker with this. I don’t want non-month days.
The French Revolution resolved the problem of these non-month days by having special holidays. Acording to Wikipedia:
The fĂȘte de l’opinion could be an excellent day for the blogosphere.
Forget base ten. We need more holidays.
I had thought those Latin prefixes applied before July and August were added to the calendar, though your explanation makes sense as well. I’m aware of March once being the first month (as was April hence the original New Years Day being April Fools Day). January is named for the Roman god Janus, guardian of gates who faces both ways, thus being appropriate for looking back on the old year and forward to the new.
From Encyclopedia Mythica
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I’m afraid they’ve made some terrible errors on that page. Here are what some of the month names reallysignify:
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p>January – in honor of the goddess of striving puberty (hence its place at the new year), Jan Brady.
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p>June – in honor of the goddess of homemaking, June Cleaver. A fine month for the baking of apple pies.
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p>July – The month set aside to reflect upon the sins of Holocaust deniers.
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p>August – the month we all feel hale and hearty.
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p>September – month in honor of those who can cross the stems of their sevens to craftily shape them into nines.
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p>October – the time of year the Festival of the Octopus was held in ancient Thermoatlanticulusulae.
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p>November – the month of refusals, or when we reject all but one politician to sit in each seat.
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p>December – bastardized from the original “Deceit Embers”, or the month when you burn with fury upon realizing that the promises made by the individuals not rejected in the Month of Refusals were, in fact, lies.
And then add some holidays as non-days.
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p>I always like this aspect of February and March. Because it’s not a leap year, the days of the week are on the same days of the month for the first 28 days of March, as they are for February. And Sunday is the the day numbered 1.
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p>Now if we could take a few of the holidays and make them non-days of the week, we could have that consistency every year and every month.
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p>I read that suggestion some place.
…a lunar calendar. There are thirteen 28-day lunar months in a solar year, but you would need to add a day or two to keep up with the sun (28×13=364).
Was lunar vs. solar. You see, the only person way back when who had the authority to modify the caledar was the Pontifex Maximus, so Caesar had to assume that title in order to make the Julian calendar. About 1500 years later it was modified again — by the Pope! When the Pope took the title of the Pontiff, he inherited the authority to also change the calendar. Luckily, he had the time’s best and brightest astrologers give him advice on how to best perfect it.
If you were one of my students, and you titled your paper “The History of Monday”, I’d expect it to talk about the history of Monday. The only facts about Monday you mention is that is a day of the week, and named after the moon, and then you go completely off topic. When was Monday invented? Where? Why is it named after the moon? Has it always been the beginning of the work week?
the post is quite clearly about nomenclature. It’s the history of “monday” in a vague sense, because it’s not JUST monday. If one of my professors was unable to grasp the realm of the implicit while reading my paper on the history of monday, I might withdraw =)
And I’m hoping it becomes a regular feature.