Names of the days of the week

File:Italian - Bracelet - Walters 41269.jpg

Italian cameo bracelet representing the days of the week, corresponding to the planets as Roman gods: Diana as the Moon for Monday, Mars for Tuesday, Mercury for Wednesday, Jupiter for Thursday, Venus for Friday, Saturn for Saturday, and Apollo as the Sun for Sunday. Middle 19th century, Walters Art Museum

In a vast number of languages, the names given to the seven days of the week (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) are derived from the names of the seven heavenly bodies (the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn) which were in turn named after contemporary Hellenistic deities. This system was introduced by the Babylonians and later adopted by the Sumerians. The Roman Empire adopted the system during late antiquity. In some other languages, the days are named after corresponding deities of the regional culture. The seven-day week was adopted in early Christianity from the Hebrew calendar, and gradually replaced the Roman internundinum. Eight-day and seven-day weeks existed side-by-side until Emperor Constantine made the seven-day week official in AD 321; thereafter, the seven-day week spread throughout the Roman Empire and eventually through Christian cultures around the world.

The history of the seven-day week can be traced to ancient civilizations. Sunday remained the first day of the week, being considered the day of the sun god Sol Invictus and the Lord's Day, while the Jewish Sabbath remained the seventh. Most historians agree the seven-day week dates back to Babylonians who started using it about 4,000 years ago. The number 7 was sacred to the Babylonians. Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire made the Day of the Sun (, "Sunday") a legal holiday centuries later.

In the international standard ISO 8601, Monday is treated as the first day of the week, but in many countries it is counted as the second day of the week.

Days named after planets

Greco-Roman tradition

Between the first and third centuries CE, the Roman Empire gradually replaced the eight-day Roman nundinal cycle with the seven-day week. The earliest evidence for this new system is a Pompeiian graffito referring to 6 February (ante diem viii idus Februarias) of the year 60 CE as dies solis ("Sunday"). Another early witness is a reference to a lost treatise by Plutarch, written in about 100 CE, which addressed the question of: "Why are the days named after the planets reckoned in a different order from the 'actual' order?" The treatise is lost, but the answer to the question is known; see planetary hours.

The Ptolemaic system of planetary spheres asserts that the order of the heavenly bodies from the farthest to the closest to the Earth is Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon; objectively, the planets are ordered from slowest to fastest moving as they appear in the night sky.

The days were named after the classical planets of Hellenistic astrology, in the order: Sun (Helios), Moon (Selene), Mars (Ares), Mercury (Hermes), Jupiter (Zeus), Venus (Aphrodite), and Saturn (Cronus).

The seven-day week spread throughout the Roman Empire in late antiquity. By the fourth century CE, it was in wide use throughout the Empire.

The Greek and Latin names are as follows:

Day	Sunday Sun	Monday Moon	Tuesday Mars	Wednesday Mercury	Thursday Jupiter	Friday Venus	Saturday Saturn
Greek	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Latin	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx

Romance languages

Except for in Portuguese and Mirandese, the Romance languages preserved the Latin names, except for the names of Sunday, which was replaced by [dies] Dominicus (Dominica), that is, "the Lord's Day", and of Saturday, which was named for the Jewish Sabbath. Mirandese and Portuguese use numbered weekdays, but retain sábado and demingo/domingo for weekends. Meanwhile, Galician occasionally uses them alongside the traditional Latin-derived names, albeit to a lesser extent (see below).

Day (see Irregularities)	Sunday Template:Langx	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday Template:Langx	Friday Template:Langx	Saturday Template:Langx
Aragonese	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Aranese Occitan
Asturian
Catalan
Corsican				Template:Hlist			Template:Hlist
French
Friulian				Template:Hlist			Template:Hlist
Galician		Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Italian
Ladin (Gherdëina)	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Ladin (Val Badia)	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Ligurian
Lombard (Bresciano)
Lombard (Milanese)
Neapolitan	Template:Hlist
Occitan
Portuguese
Romanian	Template:Hlist
Romansh (Putèr)
Romansh (Rumantsch Grischun)
Romansh (Surmiran)
Romansh (Sursilvan)
Romansh (Sutsilvan)
Romansh (Vallader)
Sardinian	Template:Hlist etc.		Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist etc.	Template:Hlist etc.	Template:Hlist etc.	Template:Hlist etc.
Sicilian	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Spanish
Venetian						Template:Hlist

Celtic languages

Early Old Irish adopted the names from Latin, but introduced separate terms of Norse origin for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, then later supplanted these with terms relating to church fasting practices.

Day (see Irregularities)	Sunday Template:Langx	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday Template:Langx	Friday Template:Langx	Saturday Template:Langx
Irish
Manx	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist		Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Old Irish	Template:Hlist
Old Irish (later)	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Scottish Gaelic	Template:Hlist

In Welsh, the word for ‘day’ is replaced by the words for ‘morning' , ’night’ or ‘afternoon’ , etc to say ‘Monday morning’ , or ‘Friday night’ , etc. It is never * or * which are ungrammatical.

Day	Sunday Template:Langx	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday Template:Langx	Friday Template:Langx	Saturday Template:Langx
Breton	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Cornish
Welsh

Albanian language

Albanian adopted the Latin terms for Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, translated the Latin terms for Sunday and Monday using the native names of Diell and Hënë, respectively, and replaced the Latin terms for Thursday and Friday with the equivalent native deity names Enji and Prende, respectively.

Day	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday	Friday	Saturday Template:Langx
Albanian

Adoptions from Romance

Other languages adopted the week together with the Latin (Romance) names for the days of the week in the colonial period. Several constructed languages also adopted the Latin terminology.

Day (see Irregularities)	Sunday Template:Langx	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday Template:Langx	Friday Template:Langx	Saturday Template:Langx
ApI Interlingua	sol-die	luna-die	marte-die	mercurio-die	jove-die	venere-die	Template:Hlist
Idiom Neutral	soldi	lundi	marsdi	merkurdi	yovdi	vendrdi	saturndi
Ido
INTAL	sundi	lundi	mardi	merkurdi	jodi	venerdi	saturdi
Interlingue
Lingua Franca Nova
Mondial	soldi	lundi	mardi	mierdi	jodi	vendi	samdi
Novial				Template:Hlist
Reform-Neutral	soldí	lundí	marsdí	mercurdí	jovdí	vendredí	saturndí
Uropi	Soldia	Lundia	Mardia	MididiaTemplate:Efn	Zusdia	Wendia	SabadiaTemplate:Efn

Day (see Irregularities)	Sunday Template:Langx	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday Template:Langx	Friday Template:Langx	Saturday Template:Langx
Chamorro
Esperanto
Filipino	Template:Hlist		Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Interlingua
Māori	[not celestially named] ( = "holy day")	( = day + Moon)	( = day + Mars)	( = day + Mercury)	( = day + Jupiter)	( = day + Venus)	[not celestially named] ( = "washing day")
Neo	Template:Hlist
Romániço	Domínico	Lun-dio	Marti-dio	Mercurii-dio	Jov-dio	Véner-dio	Sábato
Universalglot	diodai	lundai	mardai	erdai	jovdai	vendai	samdai

With the exception of sabato, the Esperanto names are all from French, cf. French dimanche, lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi.

Germanic tradition

The Germanic peoples adapted the system introduced by the Romans by substituting the Germanic deities for the Roman ones (with the exception of Saturday) in a process known as . The date of the introduction of this system is not known exactly, but it must have happened later than 100 AD but before the introduction of Christianity during the 6th to 7th centuries, i.e., during the final phase or soon after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. This period is later than the Common Germanic stage, but still during the phase of undifferentiated West Germanic. The names of the days of the week in North Germanic languages were not calqued from Latin directly, but taken from the West Germanic names.

• Sunday: Old English (), meaning "sun's day". This is a translation of the Latin phrase . English, like most of the Germanic languages, preserves the day's association with the sun. Many other European languages, including all of the Romance languages, have changed its name to the equivalent of "the Lord's day" (based on Ecclesiastical Latin ). In both West Germanic and North Germanic mythology, the Sun is personified as Sunna/Sól.
• Monday: Old English (), meaning "Moon's day". This is equivalent to the Latin name . In North Germanic mythology, the Moon is personified as Máni.
• Tuesday: Old English (), meaning "Tiw's day". Tiw (Norse ) was a one-handed god associated with single combat and pledges in Norse mythology and also attested prominently in wider Germanic paganism. The name of the day is also related to the Latin name , "Day of Mars" (the Roman god of war).
• Wednesday: Old English () meaning the day of the Germanic god Woden (known as Óðinn among the North Germanic peoples), and a prominent god of the Anglo-Saxons (and other Germanic peoples) in England until about the seventh century. This corresponds to the Latin counterpart , "Day of Mercury", as both are deities of magic and knowledge. Importantly, both are also psychopomps, carrying the souls of the dead to the afterlife. The German Mittwoch, the Low German , the miðviku- in Icelandic and the Finnish all mean "mid-week".
• Thursday: Old English (), meaning ''s day'. means thunder or its personification, the Norse god known in Modern English as Thor. Similarly Dutch , German ('thunder's day'), Finnish , and Scandinavian ('Thor's day'). "Thor's day" corresponds to Latin , "day of Jupiter" (the Roman god of thunder).
• Friday: Old English (), meaning the day of the Anglo-Saxon goddess . The Norse name for the planet Venus was , 'Frigg's star'. It is based on the Latin , "Day of Venus".
• Saturday: named after the Roman god Saturn associated with the Titan Cronus, father of Zeus and many Olympians. Its original Anglo-Saxon rendering was (). In Latin, it was , "Day of Saturn". The Nordic laugardagur, leygardagur, laurdag, etc. deviate significantly as they have no reference to either the Norse or the Roman pantheon; they derive from Old Nordic , literally "washing-day". The German (mainly used in northern and eastern Germany) and the Low German mean "Sunday Eve"; the German word derives from the name for Shabbat.

Day (see Irregularities)	Sunday	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday	Wednesday Template:Hlist	Thursday Template:Hlist	Friday Template:Hlist	Saturday Template:Langx
Afrikaans			Template:Efn
Dutch			Template:Efn
Old English
Old Saxon			Template:Hlist				Template:Hlist
Scots	Template:Hlist
West Frisian							Template:Hlist

Day (see Irregularities)	Sunday Template:Hlist	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday Template:Langx
Danish
Elfdalian
Faroese				Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Icelandic			Template:Efn	Template:Efn	Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Norwegian (Bokmål)
Norwegian (Nynorsk)	Template:Hlist
Old Norse		Template:Hlist					Template:Hlist
Swedish

Day (see Irregularities)	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday Sunday eve
German			Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist			Template:Hlist
Low German			Template:Efn	Template:Hlist			Template:Hlist
Luxembourgish			Template:Efn	Template:Efn			Template:Efn
Middle Low German			Template:Efn				Template:Hlist
North Frisian (Amrum/Föhr)				Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist		Template:Hlist
North Frisian (Halligen)				Template:Efn
North Frisian (Heligolandic)				Template:Efn
North Frisian (Karrharde)			Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
North Frisian (Mooring)
North Frisian (Northern Goesharde)	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
North Frisian (Sylt)							Template:Hlist
North Frisian (Wiedingharde)		Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist		Template:Hlist		Template:Hlist
Old High German						Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist
Saterland Frisian				Template:Efn			Template:Hlist
Yiddish	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn

Adoptions from Germanic

Sami languages have weekday names influenced from neighboring languages, with a majority of weekday names being from Germanic-Norse origin.

Day (see Irregularities)	Sunday Template:Hlist	Monday Template:Hlist	Tuesday Template:Hlist	Wednesday Template:Hlist	Thursday	Friday	Saturday Template:Langx
Finnish
Kven	Template:Hlist
Meänkieli	Template:Hlist						Template:Hlist
South Sami							Template:Hlist
Ume Sami						Template:Hlist
Pite Sami
Lule Sami	Template:Hlist
North Sami		Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist				Template:Hlist
Inari Sami					Template:Hlist	Template:Efn	Template:Hlist
Skolt Sami (for comparison)				Template:Efn	Template:Efn	Template:Hlist	Template:Efn

Day (see Irregularities)	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Māori	Template:Efn /	/	/	/	/	/	/
Tok Pisin
Volapük

Hindu tradition

Hindu astrology uses the concept of days under the regency of a planet under the term vāsara/vāra, the days of the week being called sūrya-/ravi-/āditya, chandra-/soma-, maṅgala-, budha-, guru-/bṛhaspati-, śukra-, and śani-vāsara. śukrá is a name of Venus (regarded as a son of Bhṛgu); guru is here a title of Bṛhaspati, and hence of Jupiter; budha "Mercury" is regarded as a son of Soma, that is, the Moon. Knowledge of Greek astrology existed since about the 2nd century BC, but references to the vāsara occur somewhat later, during the Gupta period (Yājñavalkya Smṛti, c. 3rd to 5th century AD), that is, at roughly the same period or before the system was introduced in the Roman Empire.

In languages of the Indian subcontinent

	Sunday the Sun (Sūrya, Ravi, Bhānu)	Monday the Moon (Chandra, Indu, Soma)	Tuesday Mars (Mangala)	Wednesday Mercury (Budha)	Thursday Jupiter (Bṛhaspati, Guru)	Friday Venus (Shukra)	Saturday Saturn (Shani)
Angika	/ /
Assamese
Awadhi
Balochi
Balti
Bengali						Template:Efn
Bhojpuri
Burushaski
Chitrali (Khowar)		Template:Efn				Template:Efn
Gujarati
Hindi
Hindko
Hmar	Pathienni	Thawṭanni	Thawleni	Nilaini	Ningani	Zirtawpni	Inrinni
Kannada
Kashmiri			or		or	or
Konkani
Maithili
Malayalam
Maldivian
Marathi
Nepali
Odia
Pashto
Punjabi (Gurmukhi)						or	or or or
Punjabi (Shahmukhi)						or	or or
Rohingya
Santali
Sanskrit
Saurashtra
Shina
Sindhi	or Ārtvāru		or Mangalu	or Budharu	or Vispati	or Shukru	or Śanscharu
Sinhala
Tamil
Telugu
Urdu		Template:Efn				Template:Efn	Template:Efn

Southeast Asian languages

The Southeast Asian tradition also uses the Hindu names of the days of the week. Hindu astrology adopted the concept of days under the regency of a planet under the term vāra, the days of the week being called āditya-, soma-, maṅgala-, budha-, guru-, śukra-, and śani-vāra. śukrá is a name of Venus (regarded as a son of Bhṛgu); guru is here a title of Bṛhaspati, and hence of Jupiter; budha "Mercury" is regarded as a son of Soma, that is, the Moon.

	Sunday the Sun (Aditya, Ravi)	Monday the Moon (Soma, Chandra, Indu)	Tuesday Mars (Mangala, Angaraka)	Wednesday Mercury (Budha)	Thursday Jupiter (Bṛhaspati, Guru)	Friday Venus (Shukra)	Saturday Saturn (Shani)
Burmese	Template:Efn (ta.nangga.new)	Template:Efn (ta.nangla)	(Angga)	(Buddhahu) (afternoon=new day) Rahu	(Krasapate)	(Saukra)	(Cane)
Mon	from Sans. āditya	from Sans. candra	from Sans. aṅgāra	from Sans. budhavāra	from Sans. bṛhaspati	from Sans. śukra	from Sans. śani
Khmer
Lao
Cham
Shan
Thai
Javanese
Balinese
Sundanese
Toba Batak
Angkola-Mandailing Batak
Simalungun Batak
Karo Batak
Pakpak Batak

Northeast Asian languages

	Sunday the Sun (Aditya, Ravi)	Monday the Moon (Soma, Chandra, Indu)	Tuesday Mars (Mangala, Angāraka)	Wednesday Mercury (Budha)	Thursday Jupiter (Bṛhaspati, Guru)	Friday Venus (Shukra)	Saturday Saturn (Shani)
Mongolian	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Kalmyk	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx

East Asian tradition

The East Asian naming system for the days of the week closely parallels that of the Latin system and is ordered after the "Seven Luminaries" ( ), which consists of the Sun, Moon and the five classical planets visible to the naked eye.

The Chinese had apparently adopted the seven-day week from the Hellenistic system by the 4th century AD, although by which route is not entirely clear. It was again transmitted to China in the 8th century AD by Manichaeans, via the country of Kang (a Central Asian polity near Samarkand). The 4th-century AD date, according to the Cihai encyclopedia, is due to a reference to Fan Ning (), an astrologer of the Jin dynasty. The renewed adoption from Manichaeans in the 8th century AD (Tang dynasty) is documented with the writings of the Chinese Buddhist monk Yijing and the Ceylonese Buddhist monk Bu Kong.

The Chinese transliteration of the planetary system was soon brought to Japan by the Japanese monk Kobo Daishi; surviving diaries of the Japanese statesman Fujiwara no Michinaga show the seven-day system in use in Heian Period Japan as early as 1007. In Japan, the seven-day system was kept in use (for astrological purposes) until its promotion to a full-fledged (Western-style) calendrical basis during the Meiji era. In China, with the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, Monday through Saturday in China are now named after the luminaries implicitly with the numbers.

Pronunciations for Classical Chinese names are given in Standard Chinese.

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Celestial Object	Sun (日) First Star – Yang (太陽星)	Moon (月) Second Star – Yin (太陰星)	Mars (火星) Third Star – Fire (熒惑星)	Mercury (水星) Fourth Star – Water (辰星)	Jupiter (木星) Fifth Star – Wood (歲星)	Venus (金星) Sixth Star – Metal or Gold (太白星)	Saturn (土星) Seventh Star – Earth or Soil (鎮星)
Classical Chinese	, (Hanyu pinyin:)	, (Hanyu Pinyin:)	, (Hanyu Pinyin:)	, (Hanyu Pinyin:)	, (Hanyu Pinyin:)	, (Hanyu Pinyin:)	, (Hanyu Pinyin:)
Japanese	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Korean	, (Hanja:) ,	, (Hanja:) ,	, (Hanja:) ,	, (Hanja:) ,	, (Hanja:) ,	, (Hanja:) ,	, (Hanja:) ,
Mongolian	,	,	,	,	,	Template:Hlist	,
Mongolian (Transliteration from Tibetan)	,	,	,	,	,	,	,
Tibetan	, ,	, ,	, ,	, ,	, ,	, ,	, ,

Numbered days of the week

Days numbered from Monday

ISO prescribes Monday as the first day of the week with ISO-8601 for software date formats.

The Slavic, Baltic and Uralic languages (except Finnish and partially Estonian and Võro) adopted numbering but took Monday rather than Sunday as the "first day". This convention is also found in some Austronesian languages whose speakers were converted to Christianity by European missionaries.

In Slavic languages, some of the names correspond to numerals after Sunday: compare Russian vtornik () "Tuesday" and vtoroj () "the second", chetverg () "Thursday" and chetvjortyj () "the fourth", pyatnitsa () "Friday" and pyatyj () "the fifth"; see also the notes regarding irregularities.

Day Number From One	Monday Day One	Tuesday Day Two	Wednesday Day Three	Thursday Day Four	Friday Day Five	Saturday Day Six	Sunday Day Seven
ISO 8601	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Russian	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Belarusian	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Ukrainian	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Lemko Rusyn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Prešov Rusyn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Pannonian Rusyn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Slovak	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Czech	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Upper Sorbian	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Lower Sorbian	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Polish	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Kashubian	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Slovene	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Burgenland Croatian	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian	Template:Hlist	Template:Langx	Template:Hlist	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Hlist
Macedonian	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Bulgarian	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Interslavic	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Lithuanian	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Latvian	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Hungarian	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Estonian	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Võro	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Mongolian (numerical)	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Southern Luo (Dholuo)	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Hawaiian	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn
Apma	Template:Hlist	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Sona	enyodi	doyodi	tinyodi	cayodi	penyodi	xiodi	zunyodi
Yakut	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn	Template:LangxTemplate:Efn

A number of Bantu languages have days numbered from Monday as an influence from Western missionaries. They brought along with them working days, e.g. in Setswana: Labobedi (the second working day – Tuesday), Laboraro (the third working day), Labone (the fourth working day), Labotlhano (the fifth working day). Sunday became known as the day of going to church when the iron (tshipi) bell rings, thus Latshipi.

In Standard Chinese, the week is referred to as the "Stellar Period" (Template:Lang-zh) or "Cycle" (Template:Lang-zh).

The modern Chinese names for the days of the week are based on a simple numerical sequence. The word for "week" is followed by a number indicating the day: "Monday" is literally the "Stellar Period One"/"Cycle One", that is, the "First day of the Stellar Period/Cycle", etc. The exception is Sunday, where 日 (rì), "day" or "Sun", is used instead of a number. A slightly informal and colloquial variant to 日 is 天 (tiān) "day", "sky" or "heaven". However, the term 週天 is rarely used compared to 星期天.

Accordingly, the notational abbreviation of the days of the week uses the numbers, for example, 一 for "M" or "Mon(.)", "Monday". The abbreviation of Sunday uses exclusively 日 and not 天. Attempted usage of 天 as such will not be understood.

Colloquially, the week is also known as the "Worship" (Template:Lang-zh), with the names of the days of the week formed accordingly. This is also dominant in certain regional varieties of Chinese.

The following is a table of the Mandarin names of the days of the weeks. Note that standard Taiwan Mandarin pronounces 期 as qí, so 星期 is instead xīngqí. While all varieties of Mandarin may pronounce 星期 as xīngqi and 禮拜/礼拜 as lǐbai, the second syllable with the neutral tone, this is not reflected in the table either for legibility.

Day (Romanizations using Hanyu Pinyin)	Monday , , 'one'	Tuesday , , 'two'	Wednesday , , 'three'	Thursday , , 'four'	Friday , , 'five'	Saturday , , 'six'	Sunday , , 'day' or , , 'sky'
Standard Modern Chinese	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist

Several Sinitic languages refer to Saturday as 週末 "end of the week" and Sunday as 禮拜. Examples include Shenyang Mandarin, Hanyuan Sichuanese Mandarin, Taishanese, Yudu Hakka, Teochew, Ningbonese, and Loudi Old Xiang. Some Hakka varieties in Taiwan still use the traditional Luminaries.

Days numbered from Sunday

Sunday comes first in order in calendars shown in the table below. In the Abrahamic tradition, the first day of the week is Sunday. Biblical Sabbath (corresponding to Saturday) is when God rested from six-day Creation, making the day following the Sabbath the first day of the week (corresponding to Sunday). Seventh-day Sabbaths were sanctified for celebration and rest. After the week was adopted in early Christianity, Sunday remained the first day of the week, but also gradually displaced Saturday as the day of celebration and rest, being considered the Lord's Day.

Saint Martin of Dumio (c. 520–580), archbishop of Braga, decided not to call days by pagan gods and to use ecclesiastic terminology to designate them. While the custom of numbering the days of the week was mostly prevalent in the Eastern Church, Portuguese and Mirandese, due to Martin's influence, are the only Romance languages in which the names of the days come from numbers rather than planetary names.

Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) historically objected to the pagan etymologies of days and months and substituted numbering, beginning with First Day for Sunday.

Icelandic is a special case within the Germanic languages, maintaining only the Sun and Moon (sunnudagur and mánudagur respectively), while dispensing with the names of the explicitly heathen gods in favour of a combination of numbered days and days whose names are linked to pious or domestic routine (föstudagur, "Fasting Day" and laugardagur, "Washing Day"). The "washing day" is also used in other North Germanic languages, but otherwise the names correspond to those of English.

Day Number from One	Sunday (Day One)	Monday (Day Two)	Tuesday (Day Three)	Wednesday (Day Four)	Thursday (Day Five)	Friday (Day Six)	Saturday (Day Seven)
Icelandic				Template:Efn		Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Hebrew							Template:Efn
Ecclesiastical Latin	Template:Efn						Template:Efn
Portuguese	Template:Efn						Template:Efn
Galician	Template:Efn						Template:Efn
Mirandese	Template:Efn						Template:Efn
Tetum
Greek	Template:Efn					Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Georgian	Template:Efn					Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Western Armenian	Template:Efn					Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Eastern Armenian	Template:Efn					Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Vietnamese	Template:Efn
Somali
Amharic				,
Arabic						Template:Efn (also )	Template:Efn
Maltese						Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Malay (incl. Indonesian and Malaysian)	or Template:Efn	or				Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Javanese	Template:Efn					Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Sundanese	Template:Efn					Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Persian						or Template:Efn or Template:Efn
Kazakh
Karakalpak
Tatar
Khowar		Template:Efn				Template:Efn
Kurdish
Uyghur	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx	Template:Langx
Old Turkic
Turkish	Template:Efn	Template:Efn	Template:Efn	Template:Efn	Template:Efn	Template:Efn	Template:Efn
Azerbaijani
Uzbek
Navajo	Template:Spell-nv Template:Efn	Template:Spell-nv	Template:Spell-nv	Template:Spell-nv	Template:Spell-nv	Template:Spell-nv	Template:Spell-nv

Days numbered from Saturday

In Swahili, the day begins at sunrise, unlike in the Arabic and Hebrew calendars where the day starts at sunset (therefore an offset of twelve hours on average), and unlike in the Western world where the day starts at midnight (therefore an offset of six hours on average). Saturday is therefore the first day of the week, as it is the day that includes the first night of the week in Arabic.

Etymologically speaking, Swahili has two "fifth" days. The words for Saturday through Wednesday contain the Bantu-derived Swahili words for "one" through "five". The word for Thursday, Alhamisi, is of Arabic origin and means "the fifth" (day). The word for Friday, Ijumaa, is also Arabic and means (day of) "gathering" for the Friday noon prayers in Islam.

Day	Saturday Template:Langx	Sunday Template:Langx	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday Template:Langx	Friday Template:Langx
Swahili

Mixing of numbering and astronomy

In the Žejane dialect of Istro-Romanian, lur (Monday) and virer (Friday) follow the Latin convention, while utorek (Tuesday), sredu (Wednesday), and četrtok (Thursday) follow the Slavic convention.

Day	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday Template:Langx	Friday Template:Langx	Saturday Template:Langx	Sunday Template:Langx
Istro-Romanian (Žejane dialect)

There are several systems in the different Basque dialects.

Day	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday Template:Langx
Basque (Gipuzkoan, Standard)				Template:Efn	Template:Efn	Template:Hlist

Day	Monday	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday	Friday	Saturday Template:Langx	Sunday Template:Langx
Basque (Biscayan)	Template:Hlist			Template:Efn	Template:Hlist

In Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino), which is mainly based on a medieval version of Spanish, the five days of Monday–Friday closely follow the Spanish names. For Sunday is used the Arabic name, which is based on numbering (meaning "Day one" or "First day"), because a Jewish language was not likely to adapt a name based on "Lord's Day" for Sunday. As in Spanish, the Ladino name for Saturday is based on Sabbath. However, as a Jewish language—and with Saturday being the actual day of rest in the Jewish community—Ladino directly adapted the Hebrew name, Shabbat.

Day	Sunday Template:Langx	Monday Template:Langx	Tuesday Template:Langx	Wednesday Template:Langx	Thursday Template:Langx	Friday Template:Langx	Saturday Template:Langx
Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino)	Template:Hlist			Template:Hlist	Template:Hlist

Other naming systems

The days of the week in Meitei (officially known as Manipuri) originated from the Sanamahi creation myth of Meitei mythology. The Udmurt days of the week derive from their connection to traditional calendar rites. The days of the week in Yoruba derive from Yoruba religion and superstitions.

Day	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Meitei (Manipuri)	("the hill")	("king's climb")	("earth's birth")	("houses built")	("horses rode")	("blood flood")	("swords washed")
Udmurt	("week day")	("birth")	("sitting")	("bloody day")	("little Sunday")	("Udmurt Sunday")	("dry day")
Yoruba	("day of immortality")	("day of trade")	("day of victory")	("day of confusion")	("day of arrival")	("day of delay")	("day of three suggestions")

See also

• Akan names of the seven-day week, known as Nnawɔtwe
• Bahá'í calendar (section Weekdays)
• Calculating the day of the week
• Week
• Work Week
• Feria
• Vāra (astronomy)

Etymological irregularities

Sunday

^☉1 Lord's Day – From Latin () or Greek ()

^☉2 Holy Day and First-Day of the Week (Day of the Sun -> Light -> Resurrection -> Born again) (Christianity)

^☉3 Resurrection (Christianity)

^☉4 Bazaar Day

^☉5 Market Day

^☉6 No Work

^☉7 Full good day

^☉8 Borrowed from English week

^☉9 From an Old Burmese word, not of Indic origin.

^☉10 Prayer day

Monday

^☽1 After No Work

^☽2 After Bazaar

^☽3 Head of Week

^☽4 Master (as in Pir, because Muhammad was born on a Monday)

^☽5 From an Old Burmese word, not of Indic origin.

^☽6 First day of the week

Tuesday

^♂1 Thing (Assembly), of which god Tyr/Ziu was the patron.

^♂2 Second day of the week (cf. Hungarian 'two')

^♂3 Third day of the week.

^♂4 From Arabic 'third day'

^♂5 From Proto-Slavic

1. REDIRECT Template:Wikt-lang

Template:Redirect template 'second'

Wednesday

^☿1 Mid-week or Middle

^☿2 The First Fast (Christianity)

^☿3 Third day of the week

Thursday

^♃1 The day between two fasts (An Dé idir dhá aoin, contracted to An Déardaoin) (Christianity)

^♃2 Five (Arabic)

^♃3 Fifth day of the week.

^♃4 Fourth day of the week.

Friday

^♀1 The Fast (Celtic) or Fasting Day (Icelandic) (Christianity)

^♀2 Good Friday or Preparation (Christianity)

^♀3 Jumu'ah (Friday Prayer)

^♀4 Gathering/Assembly/Meeting (Islam) – in Malta with no Islamic connotations

^♀5 Fifth day of the week

^♀6 Borrowed from Germanic languages

Or canàbara, cenàbara, cenàbera, cenàbura, cenarba, chenàbara, chenabra, chenapra, chenàpura, chenarpa, chenàura, cianàbara, chenabura; meaning holy supper as preparation to the sabbathday(Saturday)

Saturday

^♄1 Shabbat (Jewish and Christian Sabbath)

^♄2 Wash or Bath day

^♄3 Sun-eve (Eve of Sunday)

^♄4 After the Gathering (Islam)

^♄5 End of the Week (Arabic 'rest')

^♄6 Week

^♄7 Half good day

^♄8 Half day

Further reading

• Neugebauer, Otto (1979). Ethiopic astronomy and computus, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische klasse, sitzungsberichte, 347 (Vienna)