When I found an article on how the days of the week got their names, I had to share it with you, my #WordNerdWednesday crew! A link to the full piece is in the first comment, but here’s a sneak peak with my color commentary below:
“Wednesday, the fourth day of the week, was named by the Romans after the planet and Roman god Mercury. (You can see this in the same day of the week in French, Spanish, and Italian as mercredi, miércoles, and mercoledì.) The Norse mythology equivalent Odin, also known as Woden, is who we get the English name Wednesday from. Old English wōdnesdæg comes from the name Woden and the word dæg (“day”), for Woden’s day.” Source: Merriam-Webster Word of the Day.
This didn’t satisfy my curiosity on how we got from Mercury to Odin, though, so I did some digging. From what I can tell, a Germanic population somewhere along the way took the Latin “Mercury’s Day” and re-named it for their own primary god “Odin’s Day.” English picked up on that thread while the major Romance languages stayed aligned with Rome.
Oddly enough, the word for Wednesday in modern German (as I understand it) has nothing to do with Odin. It’s “mittwoch,” which translates to “mid-week.” That seems an infinitely more practical convention for the 21st century.
Conclusion: Language is fascinating. Humans are weird.
Let’s just hope we don’t morph to using “Humpday” in a century or two!
