Ok, here is something I hope you will find interesting. It is about the English language. It is not really a topic for discussion, but hey... just sit back, read and enjoy yourselves.
How the Days Got Their Names
The English language took its names for the months of the year from Latin by way of French some time around the year 1000 with the great influx of French and scholarly Latin words into Britain along with the coming of the Normans. But the names for the days of the week are strictly Germanic, although even there they were not immune to the Latin influence.
Earlier writers have speculated that the idea of dividing the week into seven days goes back much earlier than the Romans, possibly to the Babylonians. They at some point associated the days with the seven known planets, that is, the seven heavenly bodies then known to move through the sky. It was during the late pre-Christian period that the Romans adopted this seven-day week, giving Latin names to the days: solis dies (sun’s day), lunae dies (moon’s day), Martis dies (Mars), Mercurii dies (Mercury), Jovis dies (Jupiter or Jove), Veneris dies (Venus) and Saturni dies (Saturn). In Latin, the names of the planets other than the sun and the moon were also names of gods, and these days were dedicated to their gods. In the Romance languages that grew out of Latin (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian), the Latin influence is still strong.
The early Germanic peoples were also influenced by the Romanic culture with which they had contact, and from the Romans they took the names for the days of the week. But, instead of borrowing the Latin names, these peoples translated the Latin names into the Germanic equivalents. Thus, solis dies (sun’s day) was translated to a compound that eventually yielded the Old English sunnandǽg (Old English: sunne = sun, dǽg = day); lunae dies was translated to monandǽg (OE mona = moon). But here the translations took an interesting turn. Since the other days of the week were names for Roman gods, the Germanic people substituted the names of their own gods having the same qualities or characteristics. For example, the Roman god Mars was considered the god of war, for the Germanic people, this position was taken by the god Tyr (spelled ‘Tiw’ in OE). Thus, when Mars’ day was transported into the Germanic languages, it became tiwesdǽg in Old English. Mercury became associated with the Germanic god Odin (Woden in OE) perhaps by the Romans themselves and thus Mercurii dies was taken in Germanic languages in a way that gave us wodnesdǽg (Woden’s day). In like manner, the Germanic people substituted the name of the thunder god Thor for the Roman god Jupiter or Jove, creating thursdǽg (Thor’s day) and their Frigg (the wife of Odin) for the Roman Venus to yield friggedǽg (Frigg’s day) for Friday. The Germanic people apparently had no other god to equate with Saturn, the Roman god of seed and sowing, so the Latin name was merely translated, giving us sǽterdǽg in Old English, our modern Saturday.
Latin
solis dies
lunae dies
Martis dies
Mewrcurii dies
Jovis dies
Veneris dies
Saturni dies
Old English
sunnandǽg
monandǽg
tiwesdǽg
wodnesdǽg
thursdǽg
friggedǽg
sǽterdǽg
Modern English
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday