{"id":3962,"date":"2009-12-30T21:50:46","date_gmt":"2009-12-30T13:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/?p=3962"},"modified":"2010-01-24T11:24:06","modified_gmt":"2010-01-24T03:24:06","slug":"new-names-for-the-days-of-the-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/mathematics\/new-names-for-the-days-of-the-week-3962","title":{"rendered":"New names for the days  of the week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the year draws to a close, I'm reminded of a proposal I read somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>The names for the days of the week in English, and most European languages, are based on ancient beliefs. The origin for these names (and even why we have 7 days in a week) is not so clear, but in the days when you could actually see the sky and people were trying to figure out how the universe worked, it's not surprising the heavenly bodies were used in the naming system.<\/p>\n<table cell-padding=\"3\">\n<tr>\n<td>Sunday<\/td>\n<td>Sun<\/td>\n<td>sun day<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Monday <\/td>\n<td>Moon<\/td>\n<td>moon day<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\">Tuesday<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\"> Mars<\/td>\n<td>Tiu's day (Tiu is the god of war, as is Mars)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\">Wednesday <\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\">Mercury<\/td>\n<td>Wodan's day (Woden means \"violently insane headship\")<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\">Thursday<\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\">Jupiter<\/td>\n<td>Thor's day (god of thunder)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\">Friday <\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\">Venus<\/td>\n<td>Freya's day (Freya is the goddess of love, beauty, and prolific procreation)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\">Saturday <\/td>\n<td style=\"vertical-align: top;\">Saturn<\/td>\n<td>Saturn's day (god of agriculture)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>So considering most of us never even see the planets (due to air and light pollution), perhaps we need to consider new names for the days of the week. This proposal is quite mathematically neat (and uses Monday as the starting day).<\/p>\n<table cell-padding=\"3\">\n<tr>\n<td>Monday <\/td>\n<td>Oneday<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Tuesday<\/td>\n<td>TwoDay<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Wednesday <\/td>\n<td>Threeday<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Thursday <\/td>\n<td>Fourday<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Friday <\/td>\n<td>Fiveday<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Saturday <\/td>\n<td>Sixday<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Sunday<\/td>\n<td>Sevenday<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>There's actually a language that has such a system - Chinese. The names and meanings are:<\/p>\n<table cell-padding=\"3\">\n<tr>\n<td>Sunday<\/td>\n<td>&#26143;&#26399;&#26085;<\/td>\n<td>Star period day<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Monday <\/td>\n<td>&#26143;&#26399;&#x4e00;<\/td>\n<td>Star period one<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Tuesday<\/td>\n<td>&#26143;&#26399;&#x4e8c;<\/td>\n<td>Star period two<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Wednesday <\/td>\n<td>&#26143;&#26399;&#x4e09;<\/td>\n<td>Star period three<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Thursday <\/td>\n<td>&#26143;&#26399;&#x56db;<\/td>\n<td>Star period four<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Friday <\/td>\n<td>&#26143;&#26399;&#x4e94;<\/td>\n<td>Star period five<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Saturday <\/td>\n<td>&#26143;&#26399;&#x516d;<\/td>\n<td>Star period six<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>There's an interesting history of Japanese and Chinese day names here: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cjvlang.com\/Dow\/index.html\">Bathrobe's Days of the Week in Chinese, Japanese & Vietnamese<\/a>. According to that site, the Chinese used a 10-day per week system up until 1912 when the imperial system collapsed.<\/p>\n<p>So what do you think? Is it time to re-consider the names of the week to a simpler and more logical system?<\/p>\n<p class=\"alt\">See the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/mathematics\/new-names-for-the-days-of-the-week-3962#comments\" id=\"comms\">3 Comments<\/a> below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps it's time to move away from the ancient names used for the days of the week?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[125],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3962"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}