Thursday is Thor’s day, and is called Torsdag in the Norse languages. Miércoles is the Spanish translation for Wednesday and it is called Woensdag in Dutch and Mittwoch in German. For the Romans, it is the day for their god, Mercury and called Wednesday “dies Mercurii.” In French, Wednesday translates to Mercredi and it is Mercoledi in Italian. In Sweden, Tuesday is translated as Tisdag, Tirsdag in Danish, Dienstag in German and Dinsdag in Dutch. However, for the Romans Tuesday was the day of their god of war, Mars and called the day “dies Martis.” In Spanish, the day is called Martes, Martedi in Italian and Mardi in French. In German, Monday is called Montag while Maandag is the Dutch translation for this day. The Spanish root word is retained in the Italian Lunedi and French Lundi. In Spanish, Monday is called Lunes from the Spanish word for moon, Luna. Monday is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word, “monandæg,” which translates to the moon’s day, a day that is sacred to the moon goddess. Sunday means the “sun’s day,” which came from the Latin term “dies solis.” The Latin translation of the day is Domenica, whose root word was retained by the other Romance languages, thus, it is called Dimanche in French, Domingo is Spanish and Domenica in Italian, In Dutch, Sunday is translated as Zondag while it is Sonntag in German. When the pagan Romans started worshiping the Sun more, the first day of the week became Sunday. The days of the week though were derived from Roman deities, with Saturday as the first day of the week. The term “day” came from the Old English term dæg, which means day or lifetime. After the scientific data, let us take a look at the origin of the word “day” and the days of the week. Currently a day has 86,400.002 seconds, with an increase of 1.7 milliseconds every century.
The phenomenon slows down the rotation of the earth. Today it has been calculated that a day on earth had increased in length due to the tides that are raised by the moon. Six hundred twenty million years ago, a day was estimated to have 21.9 hours. Have you ever thought of where the term “day” came from? What about the names of the days of the week?Ī constant day depends on the sun passing a local meridian at noon or at midnight, based on the geographical longitude and the time of the year, to some extent, measured at about 24 hours and +/- 30 seconds. One day is divided into day time and night time, about 12 hours for each division. Typically a day is 24 hours, or 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds.