Hello all!
Following on from the feedback yesterday, I thought I'd do another one. I'm not going to do this every day, but I just fancied doing another one today. Enjoy!
Ladies, again, prepare yourselves for an incredibly sexy experience. Men, if you want to prevent any water-induced injuries, be sure to take all necessary precautions; place towels down in front of your women, absorbent mats and so on.
Anyway, why are our day names so weird compared to other European languages' day names?
To start with, as like yesterday, we need to find out which of the few possible cultures is responsible for this. The first inhabitants of our island appear to have been the Celts, but our day names are definitely not of Celtic origin. Then we had the Romans ruling over part of the island, but our day names are not Latin either (apart from Saturday). When the Roman armies were pulled out of Britannia at around 400AD, Proto-Germanic speaking tribes named the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians sailed over from the Denmark area to settle - and once again, like yesterday, these are the guys who gave us our day names.
Those tribes that settled here came from an area that was never under direct control of the Roman empire. Many historians aren't sure whether the Anglo-Saxons had day names before settling on our island. The concept of naming days was at that point a Roman concept (as far as our region was concerned).
Never-the-less, the Romano-Brittonic population that remained on half of the island at that time did understand the concept of naming days. This was because the Roman soldiers who previously occupied the land used their day-naming concept. So, when the Anglo-Saxons arrived and gradually settled, when they too became familiar with the concept of naming days, and they subsequently sought to copy the process but tailor it towards their own culture rather than the now-defunkt Roman one.
Before I get into the names that they come up with, there is one thing that was common amongst the three cultures that we've touched on so far. There was a word that represented "a period of time of warmth where the sun would come up and then go down" - this was a day. 'Day' is an extremely old word which comes from Proto-Indo-European (the root of many languages that dates back around 5000 years) 'dhegh' or 'dyeu'. Researchers find that these two words have ancient relations to the words 'burn' and 'shine'. This makes sense for that period of time between night times - "it's burn/shine time" - day.
Another interesting point is that there is a very closely-related word that's also spread around PIE languages, and that word is 'deiuós'. Basically, if you trace it back, the word 'Deus' in Latin means 'God'. Even in English, you've got the likes of 'Deity'. Notice the massive resemblance to the word 'Day'? Also, we have the PIE word 'deywós' which meant 'celestial'. So basically, going back 2,000 - 5,000 years ago, the meaning of 'Day' would likely have been some sort of mix of; 'period of brightness', 'burning', 'shining', 'bright sky', 'heavens' or 'God'. This lays the foundation for what a 'day' actually is.
Incidentally, because of it's ancient root, it makes sense that a huge amount of PIE child languages share the word 'day' to represent "a period of shining or light" - and indeed they do. English is 'day', Spanish is 'dia', Punjabi is 'dina', Polish is 'dzien' and Welsh is 'dydd'. Furthermore, the closer you get to the Proto-Germanic branch of languages, the closer the resemblance will be. For example, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch are all 'Dag'. German is 'Tag'.
While we're on the matter of the 'g', something peculiar about English is how it somehow softened up in comparison to the other Germanic tribes. You'll notice that a lot of Germanic 'g' sounds became 'y' sounds in English. You can see this today when you compare English to German. For example 'sonnig' means 'sunny', 'windig' means 'windy', 'zwanzig' means 'twenty', etc.
You'll also notice that a lot of Germanic 'þ/ð' (th) sounds remained in English and Icelandic, but were sharpened up in German. For example 'mother'/'mutter', 'father'/'vater', 'brother'/'bruder', etc.
For whatever reason, it seems that the Anglo-Saxons at some point had a tendency to soften words up. Maybe it's because they wanted to be smooth with the ladies! Whereas the likes of German went on to progress into a rather aggressive-sounding language.
Anyway, so far, you'll probably agree with me that the 'day' suffix of many day names means either 'period of brightness', 'God', or possibly something in-between.
Now, the Romans named days of the week after celestial bodies, but the Anglo-Saxons wanted to tailor the system towards their own culture. They named them after the following Gods:
Monandæg - Mani's day (æ is a short a, g is soft like y)
Tiwesdæg - Tyr's day
Wodnesdæg - Woden's day
Þunresdæg - Thor's day (Þ/ð is 'th' - Iceland still uses this character and we need it too!)
Frigedæg - Frigg's day
Sæternesdæg - Saturn's day (This one is weird)
Sunnandæg - Sól's day
These gods were each different and had their places in Anglo-Saxon culture, but three of them are particularly interesting to me:
Mani is the goddess of the Moon. The Moon was a massive deal to the Anglo-Saxons because it served as a sort of regulator for everything. The agricultural seasons were 'met out' by the Moon, and they knew that certain things happened according to the phases of the moon. They knew that the moon could control the sea (tides, etc). Women had 'monaðblot', which literally means 'moon-blood'. They realised that women would bleed according to the moon's ('moonthly') cycle. This is where we get the word 'Month' from - 'monað'. Women would give birth after nine 'moonthly' cycles.
In other words, the moon was a sacred thing that you absolutely didn't want to piss off, for fear that it would dick about with the seasons, cause floods, dick around with your woman's period (no man wants that), do 'something' to the timing of delivery of your unborn baby, or whatever else.
Frigg was a goddess of sex, love and fertility. "Frig" generally means "to masturbate". A woman can sometimes be said to be "frigid", that may have some relation also (but it may not). There are other related old words that aren't in common use anymore, and they generally have a sexual nature.
Saturday was a weird one. Saturday isn't Anglo-Saxon, it's Latin. For some reason, they adopted the Roman day name for Saturday. If you look at the northern Germanic tribes though, they did choose a Proto-Germanic day name that resembled something like Lauðrdag. Northern-Germanic countries still call Saturday something similar even now.
The Anglo-Saxons also had this word 'Lauðr'. Remember that the 'þ/ð' characters are the modern day 'th'. The word 'Lauðr' developed into 'lather'. So, on this day, 'Latherday', the Norse would lather themselves in a bath. Saturday was bath day! Why didn't the Anglo-Saxons have 'Bathday' also? It seems that they'd prefer to adopt a foreign name rather than have to have a bath on a Saturday!
The end! Please mop all floors! |
