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week, period of seven days, a unit of time artificially devised with no astronomical basis. The week’s origin is generally associated with the ancient Jews and the biblical account of the Creation, according to which God laboured for six days and rested on the seventh. Evidence indicates, however, that the Jews may have borrowed the idea of the week from Mesopotamia, for the Sumerians and the Babylonians divided the year into weeks of seven days each, one of which they designated a day of recreation.
The Babylonians named each of the days after one of the five planetary bodies known to them (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) and after the Sun and the Moon, a custom later adopted by the Romans. For centuries the Romans used a period of eight days in civil practice, but in 321 CE Emperor Constantine established the seven-day week in the Roman calendar and designated Sunday as the first day of the week. Subsequent days bore the names Moon’s-day, Mars’s-day, Mercury’s-day, Jupiter’s-day, Venus’s-day, and Saturn’s-day. Constantine, a convert to Christianity, decreed that Sunday should be a day of rest and worship.
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The days assigned by the Romans to the Sun, Moon, and Saturn were retained for the corresponding days of the week in English (Sunday, Monday, and Saturday) and several related languages. The Roman names for the other days of the week were retained in Romance languages. (For example, Friday, Venus’s-day is viernes in Spanish and vendredi in French.) The other weekday names in English are derived from Anglo-Saxon words for the gods of Teutonic mythology. Tuesday comes from Tiu, or Tiw, the Anglo-Saxon name for Tyr, the Norse god of war. Tyr was one of the sons of Odin, or Woden, the supreme deity after whom Wednesday was named. Similarly, Thursday originates from Thor’s-day, named in honour of Thor, the god of thunder. Friday was derived from Frigg’s-day, Frigg, the wife of Odin, representing love and beauty, in Norse mythology.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Erik Gregersen.
