If you’ve been following my looks into the naming conventions for the days of the week, then you know by now that each day is named for a god whose “hour” began the day in the Neo-Babylonian empire’s calendar system (they had seven hours in a day, so each day of the week began with a new one).

And with that in mind, you can probably look at Saturday and immediately go, “Oh! Saturn’s Day!” And you’d be right. But after the previous days of the weeks, which were named for Germanic or Norse equivalents of those Roman or Greek gods, you might be asking, “So…why not a Germanic equivalent? Where’s the Thor or Oden or Frigga here?”

As it turns out, there’s no equivalent to Saturn, god of agriculture, civilization, and social order, in Norse mythology. So Saturn’s name was simply brought into those systems, from which English derived. Interestingly, though, other Germanic languages, as well as some Slavic ones, went the Christian direction instead and call this last day of the week something derived from the word sabbath instead. Even French calls it samedi, from their word for sabbath.

And then…there’s Danish and Swedish. Their words (lørdag and lördag) literally mean “bath day.” Cue me laughing at that one!

Word Nerds Merch!