No, my keyboard did not have melt down. It is old English meaning the day of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Fríge. But we state it today as "It's Friday!" Well, not really. But we get excited about the "Friday" if you work a typical job. I'm taking a little diversion from my blog and focusing on a random thought (get use to it, it won't be the last time). The days of the week have an interesting history. At one point the Roman calendar had 8 days a week. Which, I would be OK with if we had a 3-day weekend. But in the US, we would probably have a 6-day work week, not so good.

One of my personal favorites has been Tuesday, which is "Monday the Sequel". Still too far away from Friday, and just more of the Monday stuff going on. But what do the real names mean? I love general trivia, so I wanted to dig a little deeper in to this. What does is have to do with Architecture, not much except I try not to schedule meetings on Mondays. And since Tuesday is a sequel of Monday, I probably should stop holding meetings on Tuesdays too.

But let's focus on the definitions of each day. All of our current words for the days of the week come from Old English, except for Saturday. The days are names after the Germanic deities. Most of our modern calendars in the 'West' have the week begin on Sunday. Sunday is an easy one, simply means "sun's day". The sun is the beginning of life, it only makes sense to name the first day of the week after the sun.

Now back to Monday. While it feels like the first day of the week, we are actually on day two. It is to recognize the smaller sky cousin of the sun. You guessed it "moon's day" So we leave the celestial sky objects and the rest of the week is named after the Germanic deities. One should note that the original Roman names were all the celestial objects, which were named after Roman Gods.

Tuesday is "Tiw's day", the one-handed god associated with combat. Now I know why it is Monday the sequel. In Latin, dies Martis, which is the "Day of Mars". Mars is the God of war, so it is a pretty easy transition. Wednesday is more than "Hump Day", which all I see is the camel on the TV commercial. But is named after the Germanic god Woden. The old Norse name is Odin, who is a widely revered god at the time. For modern times, the day of the week is downplayed but to honor Odin with a day of the week is amazing considering, Odin is associated with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, battle, sorcery, poetry, frenzy, and the runic alphabet.

Break out your Marvel movies of Thor and watch them again. That's right, Thursday is 'Thor's day" the god of Thunder. While Friday is everyone's favorite day (I prefer Saturday, sleeping in and doing my own thing). It is the only day to honor a female goddess, the Anglo-Saxon goddess Fríge. Which ironically Fríge was married to Odin. Wednesday must have been THE day of week in ancient times. The Norse name for the planet Venus was Friggjarstjarna, 'Frigg's star'. Which ties back to Latin "Day of Venus".

And the last day with a 2,000 year plus roman hold over in English is Saturday. Named after the Roman god Saturn. If we dig into the name in other languages, we see some interesting stuff. Scandinavian is Lördag translate to "Washing-Day". While German is Sonnabend translating to "Sunday's eve". I must be part Scandinavian, because most of the time it is my washing day.

And then there is "Black Friday". Everyone's favorite day 'Friday' but with an evil dark twist. If there is one day on the calendar that I would love to see be removed is this shopping crazy day. While the deals may be great, family is greater and I choose to spend my time with family.

…and now for something completely different.
The average person walks the equivalent of three times around the world in a lifetime.