There is an interesting
correlation between the
Norse choice of
gods to rule the days and the ones the
Romans chose.
ENGLISH ITALIAN SPANISH FRENCH
Monday lunedi lunes lundi
Tuesday martedi martes mardi
Wednesday mercoledi miércoles mercredi
Thursday jovedi jueves jeudi
Friday venerdi viernes vendredi
Saturday sabato sábado samedi
Sunday domenico domingo dimanche
lunedi: from
luna, the
Moon
martedi: from
Mars, the
Roman god of
war
mercoledi: from
Mercury, the
messenger of the gods(1)
jovedi: from
Jove, the
thunder god(2)
venerdi: from
Venus, the goddess of
love(3)
sabato: from the
Sabbath day
domenico: essentially, the day of the
Lord
Why the decisions were made is still beyond me; why the fifth day of the week belonged to the goddess of love and not the goddess of, say, the harvest, or any other deity, seems to have been made arbitrarily.
It seems fairly safe to say that the Romans named the days first and then, during their conquests and fall, their neighbors and former vassal states took these ideas and made them their own.(4)
Another bit of interest is that in Italian and French, the days belong to the gods (jovedi = day of Jove), while the Spanish just use the possessive (jueves = Jove's).
Now, in German, we have:
Sonntag: like Sunday
Montag: like Monday
Diensdag: "Assembly Day"; possibly from the assembling of soldiers?
Mittwoch: mid-week, literally
Donnerstag: "thunder day"
Freitag: like Friday
Samstag: presumably like samedi
Another interesting derivation is in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, Saturday is Lördag or Lørdag, "
washing day".
(1)
Odin, besides being the
All-Father, was also the most
informed of the Norse
pantheon; he traded his
eye for his
wisdom, and his
ravens travel around the globe for information, making him a good parallel to Mercury.
(2) Jove (Jupiter) was the leader of the Roman gods, yes, but one of the major factors of his aspect was as the god of the lightning.
(3) Frigga was the Norse equivalent of Juno. However, the Norse goddess of love (and analogue of Venus) is Freyja; the similarity of names may indicate that the goddesses were combined into one, or that Friday was named after Freyja instead. The similarity could also be meaningless and the parallel false.
(4) This is simply speculation on my part; please don't write a paper on it without backup sources.
Source for some of the days:
www.info-galaxy.com/Holiday/History/history.html