Summer is well underway: Your Netflix account is being overused, you’ve caught up on a semester’s worth of missed sleep, and you have a weird urge to hang out with your parents more than ever before.
Your friend shoots you a text asking if you want to get lunch next week. You promptly respond with an enthusiastic, “Taco Tuesday?!” as you simultaneously shovel five barbecue Lays into your mouth.
But then you pause. You look up from your phone, lock eyes with your gimpy, 13-year-old golden retriever who is mindlessly staring at your food-covered fingers, and ask yourself, What day is it today? And if the situation is really bad, How long have I been sitting on this couch?
During the summertime it is easier than ever to forget what day of the week it is, if only for a moment or two. We get lost in a habit of solely making impromptu plans and forget that a large portion of our society is glued to a calendar for the whole twelve months in a year. In forgetting which day it is, some may proclaim that we are liberated. Free, if you will. However, others question the days of the week with skepticism and inquiry.
If proper labels for each day of the week become so arbitrary in the summer, then why is it necessary, according to the English language, to capitalize the first letter of each day?
According to linguistic officials Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, co-hosts of a sub-program on NPR called, “A Way With Words,” the names of weekdays date back to the Romans. Each name derives from the Latin word for the sun, the moon, and the five known planets of the time. The table below illustrates this line of reasoning as documented in the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
| English | Latin | Anglo |
| Sunday | Solis | Sun |
| Monday | Lunae | Moon |
| Tuesday | Martis | Tiw-Equal to the Roman Mars |
| Wednesday | Mercurii | Woden-Equal to the Roman Mercury |
| Thursday | Jovis | Thor-Equal to the Roman Jupiter |
| Friday | Veneris | Frigg-Equal to the Roman Venus |
| Saturday | Saturni | Saterne-The Roman god of agriculture, Saturn |
Barnette and Barrett explain that because the names of the days of the week are associated with previously existing proper nouns, then the days of the week are also meant to be proper nouns.
This logic also rings true with the names of the months of the year, though instead of being named after celestial objects, January through August were named after Roman deities and September through December were named after the Latin words for “seven, eight, nine,” and “ten.”
A fragment of a Roman calendar for the month of April.
It turns out that the names of the days of the week, and even months, are not arbitrary after all. To this day we hold onto the significance that was bestowed upon these words by our Roman predecessors long ago. We assign certain meanings to certain days based on seemingly permanent routines of work, school, and play. But the evolution of these meanings covers vast territory. It’s fascinating to think that we still rely on the names of the week to inform us of whether to sprint out the front door with a coffee to-go on a dreaded Monday or to sleep in on a warm summer Saturday. A system that was originally based on the solar system has turned into something monotonous: a list of days that guide our plans and, even more so, our feelings.
As various planets help you schedule your weekly routine and Roman deities direct how many months we have until school starts back up in the fall, sit back on your couch, take in a couple more barbecue Lays, and live through the days of the week this summer whether or not you recognize a Tuesday from a Thursday.
And then ask your parents if they want to hang out.
Image Sources: www.someecards.com, Wikipedia
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