Ancient man looked up in the sky and saw 7 wanderers (planetoi in greek) against the backdrop of stable star constellations.(1 & 2) The Sun and the Moon; hard to miss.
(3,4, & 5) The Earth's closest neighbors: Mars, Venus, & Mercury
(6 & 7) the Solar System's largest planets: Saturn & Jupiter
(the other wanderers in the Solar System we know of today are not visible to the naked eye.)
From this we get our seven days of the week. The romance languages have a relatively direct correspondance from planet to day. For the English, you have to go through some northern European gods that were correlates to the original greek and roman ones. Apparently, as the roman empire brought the seven day week northwards in europe, the northern peoples adopted the 7 day concept but substituted some of their own gods for certain days.
Dimanche in French doesn't correspond well until you realize that the Holy Roman Empire did not want to be Sun-Worshipers any longer but rather have a "Day of God" or "Lord's Day". Also interesting is the movement of sunday to the front of the week (even now some calendars have it as the first day of the week and some as the last) and the movement of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday for early Christians.
(3,4, & 5) The Earth's closest neighbors: Mars, Venus, & Mercury
(6 & 7) the Solar System's largest planets: Saturn & Jupiter
(the other wanderers in the Solar System we know of today are not visible to the naked eye.)
From this we get our seven days of the week. The romance languages have a relatively direct correspondance from planet to day. For the English, you have to go through some northern European gods that were correlates to the original greek and roman ones. Apparently, as the roman empire brought the seven day week northwards in europe, the northern peoples adopted the 7 day concept but substituted some of their own gods for certain days.
| English | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday |
| Moon | Mars | Mercury | Jupiter | Venus | Saturn | Sun | |
| French | Lundi | Mardi | Mercredi | Jeudi | Vendredi | Samedi | Dimanche |
| La Lune | Mars | Mercure | Jupiter | Venus | Saturne | Soleil | |
| god | Luna (Roman) | Mars/Tyr (Roman/ Norse) | Mercury/ Woden (Roman/ anglo-saxon) | Jupiter/ Thor (Roman/ Norse) | Venus/ Fria (Roman/ Norse) | Saturn (Roman) | Sol/ Dominica (Roman/ Latin) |
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