Just as I was drifting away into wonderland, I was curious to know why and who named the days? I had some ideas about the months, which were named after Roman Gods and kings. (January was named after Janus and, August named after Augustus etc.). However, as to the origin of the naming of the days, that was still a mystery to me. So I decided to solve the mystery starting with Tuesday! Till now Tuesday has been just another day between Monday and Wednesday. So I went to Wikipedia to get some answers.
It turns out that the day was named after the Norse God, Tyr (or Tiw). It was Tiw's Day which later turned into Tuesday. I ran a little background check on Tyr to get to know why they named the day after him. Tyr is supposedly the God of combat, victory and glory. He was the son of Odin (the God of Wisdom and.....), and is often portrayed as one handed. In old Norse, Tyr literally translated to "God", hence he is believed to be the Father of the Gods and head of the pantheon. However later they stated him as the Norse equivalent of Mars, the Roman God of War.
That was the most details I got about the chap. And I was still left with many questions:
1. Why name the days after Norse gods, while the months are named after Roman Gods?
2. What's so special about Tyr that made a day to be named after him?
3. Is there any relation to him and naming this particular day? (Why the third day and not the first or the second day?)
Well the days were actually named by the Greeks, after the solar system. The first day was dedicated to the Sun, the second was the Moon, followed by the 5 planets that were known back then. Incidentally the planets were named after Greek Gods, there by the days of the week were named after these Gods. And the Romans simply stole the ideas from the Greeks and substituted their Gods for the Greek gods (Mars, Mercury,Venus, Jupiter and Saturn). And according to this the 3rd day was named after the god, Mars. Hence in Latin the 3rd day was called as Dies Martes, which means the day of Mars.
And the Germanic people took the idea from the Romans and incorporated it to fit the Norse gods that they worshipped. So the 5 days that were named after the Roman gods now got to be replaced by equivalent Norse Gods (Tyr, Wodan, Thor, Freyja, however they left Saturn remain, probably because there was no Norse equivalent for Saturn).
And since English is a Germanic language, the days as we use it was derived from these Norse Gods.
Sun's day = Sunday
Moon's day = Monday
Tyr's(Tiw's) day = Tuesday
Wodan's day = Wednesday
Thor's day = Thursday
Freyja's day = Friday
Saturn's day = Saturday
Tada, and that's how the days were named.
No comments:
Post a Comment