We pronounce it Wenzday but spell it Wednesday, which I'm told is from Wodens Day. The Germans have a more realistic name - Mittwoch, which almost sounds like Mid Week. By that standard many of us call it Hump Day as the day the week starts downhill. Happy Hump Day
Actually I learned that it's from the old German where all the days of the week were names after gods. Woden's Day.
I try to include a 'd' in there, though I probably still fail at getting it right. Probably comes out to sound about like, "Wendsday". Hump Day will do just fine though. :cheers2:
I include the d in there when I say it. Wed-nes-day. People look at me funny when I say it, so I try to avoid conversations about it in real life.
Monday was the day of the moon. Tuesday was Tiwes Deag or Tyr's Day. Wednesday was Wodan's Day. Thursday was Thor's Day. Friday was Freyja's Day. Saturday was the only day taken from Roman god, Saturn. And Sunday was Sonntaeg's Day.
Mittwoch literally means midweek in German. Other than that, though, the day names in German are just as random and meaningless as in English.
i've actually got other names for all the days of the week: Sunday = Son~day Monday = Moan~day Tuesday = Two-2's~day Wednesday = Wendy's~day Thursday = Thirsty~day Friday = Fried~day and Saturday = Sat~Around~day :rofl:
this obviously makes the most scence! However Zoomie is probably most accurate, it's not nearly as funny.
I did, did you? German: Montag Dienstag Mittwoch Donnerstag Freitag Samstag Sonntag "Donner" means thunder, thursday (Donnerstag) used to be Thor's Day. "Freitag" I guess you could argue is derived from Freya, other than that, though, they are seemingly unrelated to the old gods.
I did say that. Then I corrected myself, stating that it was old German translated to old English after the Saxon invasions of Britain. But they are still derived from German and Norse gods.
My only argument was that in the modern German language there is no apparent order to the names of the days of the week, no more so than English in any event. Mittwoch is in no way related to the gods of old. You could argue that some of the names resemble the gods you mentioned, like Thursday/Donnerstag is surely derived from Thor, but then you could also argue that a lot of them don't really bear a resemblance to said gods.
Ok let me be a little clearer, not that it matters. Monday: derived sometime before 1200 from monedæi, which itself developed from Old English (around 1000) mōnandæg and mōndæg (literally meaning "day of the moon"). Tuesday: The name comes from Middle English Tiwesday, from Old English Tiwes dæg, named after the Nordic god Tyr, who was the approximate equivalent of the Roman war god Mars, and Greek god Ares. Wednesday: from the Middle English Wednes dei, which is from Old English language Wēdnes dæg, meaning the day of the English god Woden (Wodan) who was a god of the Anglo-Saxons in England until about the 7th century. Wēdnes dæg is like the Old Norse Oðinsdagr ("Odin's day"), which is an early translation of the Latin dies Mercurii ("Mercury's day"), and reflects the widespread association of Woden with Mercury going back to Tacitus. Thursday: From the Old English Þunresdæg (with loss of -n-, first in northern dialects, from influence of Old Norse Þorsdagr), meaning "Day of Thor". Thor was the god of thunder and so most Germanic languages name the day either after Thor (torsdag in Scandinavia) or thunder (German Donnerstag, Dutch donderdag). Friday: from the Old English frigedæg, meaning the day of Frige the Anglo-Saxon form of Frigg, a West Germanic translation of Latin dies Veneris, "day (of the planet) Venus." However, in most Germanic languages the day is named after Freyja—such as Frīatag in Old High German, Freitag in Modern German, Freyjudagr in Old Norse, Vrijdag in Dutch, Fredag in Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish—but Freyja and Frigg are frequently identified with each other. Saturday was the only day taken from Roman god, Saturn. And Sunday was Sonntaeg's Day or the day of the Sun, which with the moon (Monday) were both highly worshiped in pre-Christian Europe. Yes, I cut and pasted some of the from wiki, as it's the fastest source I have on etymology, yes, I have other sources but they would take more time than I want to spend on the subject and no, I don't give a fuck what you believe.
Danke, Dragonfly. You seem to have gotten it. Forget all the etymology of names, I was just doing a setup for HUMP DAY. Yes Mittwoch means mid week, which is why I used the phrase that it sounds like mid week sometimes known as HUMP DAY. I even put in a little drawing of mine showing the shuttle humping a 747. It was just a joke. (Or, was all this very quick, long thread arguing about names of weekdays in several languages just a reverse joke on me to see how long it would be before I said something) :toetap05:
Shale my only prayer to the Goddess (and I make it every day) is that I am as sexually active as you in 20 years (or at least still have the urges I can satisfy myself).