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Ever wonder where the words Monday, Tuesday, etc come from?? Us too! In this episode we break down the science of etymology, and the history of the English days of the week.
SOURCES:
Almaden, S. A. (2026, July 21). Learning the days of the week in Norwegian and their meanings. Beelinguapp Blog. https://beelinguapp.com/blog/%20learning-the-days-of-the-week-in-norwegian-and-their-meanings
Berges, D. (2026, October 22). Days of the week in Spanish. Berges Institute Spanish Classes. https://www.bergesinstitutespanish.com/blog/days-of-the-week-in-spanish
Contributors, What's The Origin of the Days of the Week in Your Language, Ask Europe/Reddit.
French days of the week (with audio pronunciation) - Learn French. (n.d.). https://www.thefrenchexperiment.com/learn-french/days-of-week
Schantl, S., MA. (2026, September 30). The surprising origins behind the names of the days of the week. Duolingo Blog. https://blog.duolingo.com/days-of-the-week-names/
Staff, Real Language Expert Magazine . (2026, July 2). The Secret Life of the Days of the Week: a journey through language, myth, and history. Real Language Experience. https://www.reallanguageexperience.com/post/the-secret-life-of-the-days-of-the-week-a-journey-through-language-myth-and-history
The origins behind English weekday names | EF English Live. (2024, March 6). EF English Live. https://englishlive.ef.com/en/blog/language-lab/origins-behind-english-weekday-names/
Y, A. (2026, March 20). Days of the week in Arabic – pronunciation, meanings, and usage. Language learning with Preply Blog. https://preply.com/en/blog/days-of-the-week-in-arabic/
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Mimi Faatz
English is weird. I'm just gonna come out and say it. English is a weird language. It's a hodgepodge, a mashup, the ultimate cornucopia of just weird words. And one of those weird circumstances is the way that we name the days of the week. And that little conundrum is what we're going to talk about on Hello from the Van. It seems like a pretty simple thing. What do you call those days on the calendar? In English, we call them Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and finally Saturday. I know that little recap seems redundant and useless, but I promise it matters for today's episode. I am currently trying to learn Spanish with my kids. One of the patterns that I have noticed in all of the languages that I've studied is that the days of the week in almost every other language sound similar. I study French in junior high and high school. Let's take Monday, for example. Monday in French is Lundi, and it means the moon. In Spanish, the word is lunis, and it means the moon. In college, I was on a journey of self-discovery, and my university offered a Romanian course, so I took a Romanian class to fulfill my language requirement for graduation. You wanna know what the word in Romanian is for Monday? It's Lun. And you wanna know what that word means? It means the moon. How come the rest of the languages out here are talking about the moon? But then all of the English speakers are like, what are you doing tomorrow? Oh, tomorrow's Monday. I've gotta go do the grocery shopping. Our days of the week are very different in English than they are for most of the other languages in the world. And it all goes back to the Greeks and the Romans. We've talked about these guys before in several episodes, as their quest for world domination has influenced a lot of the things that we do thousands of years later. And one of those things is our calendar. Because if there's anything that you need to know about the Greeks and the Romans is that they loved their gods. And honestly, they had a lot of them. In the Roman religion, they had a list of 20 principal gods or main gods that they worshipped. Let me give you some of these names and see if you recognize them. Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Neptune, Juno, Luna, Diana, Minerva, and finally Venus. These all ring a bell? Yeah, a lot of our planets are also named after these Roman gods. Okay, we get it. The Romans took over a lot of the world. We now name the planets after them. That's great and all, but what does that have to do with the days of the week? Yeah, I hate to break it to you. What do you think the days of the week are also named after? If you guessed the gods of the Roman religion, you'd also be correct. Let's start with Monday again. Monday literally means the day of the moon in Latin. Tuesday is the day of Mars, Wednesday is Mercury, Thursday is Lovis or Jupiter, Friday is Veneris or Venus, and Saturday is Saturn. These are all Roman gods, and their names come from the Latin language, and that's how we get our days of the week. But it's actually not that easy because somewhere along the way, when they were being conquered, the ancient Germans said, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second, we will use some of your days, but we will not be worshiping all of your gods. We will be choosing some of our own to insert into the middle of the week. Are you confused yet? English is considered a Germanic language, meaning it is influenced by German. And then it gets even more complicated because the Danish, not the food, the people, said, wait a second, we will take some of your German words, but we will not be using all of them. We would like to also substitute some of our language. So again, remember how it's all just a hodgepodge of everybody conquering each other and influencing each other? Our days of the week are no different. Let me give you an example. Let's take the word Tuesday in English. In every other Latin-based language or Latin-influenced language, it doesn't even have to be a Latin-based language. In those languages, the word for Tuesday is some sort of iteration of the word Mars. This is the Roman God of War. The Germans, for example, said, Nope, we're not going to use your God. We're going to use the Germanic or Norse God of War. And so on and so forth through several other languages who just said, listen, we're not going to use the Roman God of war. We will be using our own. And it's just this repeating pattern of the Romans saying, This is our God for this day of the week, and other languages and other regions saying, listen, we'll agree with you that Monday is the moon's day, and we'll agree with you that Sunday is the sun's day. But those other days of the week, those are ours, and we are going to name them after our gods or our culture. When we take something as seemingly simple as the day Tuesday and break down the word, where it comes from, how it came about, its study across the world. This is a science called etymology, not to be confused with entomology. Entomology is the study of bugs. Etymology is the study of words and where they came from, their origin and evolution. Again, entomology, bugs. Etymology, words. It's a very important distinction. And if you're studying the names of bugs, well then that would be the etymology of entomology. I need a nap. But that's enough about that. Let's get back to days of the week. Here's a list of languages that use Roman-influenced days of the week. Portuguese, but only for half of the week. Italian, Romanian, Catalonian, Galatian, Sardinian, French, and Spanish. But remember, when it comes to days of the week, the Romans also now continually influence those who speak Germanic-based languages. This is English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. And if you were thinking, okay, great, we get it. The Romans conquered most of Europe. So Europe and the places that it influenced are also influenced by the Romans. Awesome. What about the rest of the world? Well, let's take Japan, for example. Their Monday also means the moon. Their Sunday also means the sun. Are we sensing a theme here? Even all the way to Japan. Monday is still the moon's day, and Sunday is still the sun's day. It's the middle of the week that is culturally and linguistically different all around the world. That is, until we get to Arabic-speaking countries. In Arabic, the week starts on Sunday, and the day for Sunday literally means the first. Their Monday? Yeah, it's not based on the word moon, but on the word second. Their days of the week are literally the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth. Then Friday is considered the day of gathering, centered around religion and congregational prayer, and then Saturday is their day of rest. Interestingly enough, in Arabic, their weekend, their Friday and Saturday, the names of those days aren't named after numbers, they're named after their religious gatherings. So what you can get from when we talk about the days of the week is that almost every single area of the world names their days of the week after some sort of religion, either their own or one that they were influenced by. Etymology or the science of words is fascinating because a lot of the time we're saying things that we don't even realize where they came from. It's just a Monday or a Tuesday or the day my kids have soccer. We don't realize that we're naming things after a group that conquered 2000 years ago and their belief system. It's incredibly fascinating, and I'm really hoping that dipping our toe into the water of this science is just as fascinating to you. There's more to it, but I'll leave it there. I'm Mimi Fotz, and this has been Hello from the Band.
