Moon's day
Monday, the first one in June; and what a nice day it was!
I was supposed to do some early classes, but they were cancelled. So instead, I took a saw and cut off some dead boughs and branches from the apple trees. It’s a place where nature is mostly louder than the few cars passing by.
Try to imagine the saw pulling through the wood, the sound as it moves back and forth, the smell of the fine powder falling out..
Add crickets chirping and birds tweeting, bees, all kinds of bugs, insects and wasps flying around like crazy, to make the picture more lucid.
Today was especially good, because I’ve finally finished an article. Better have said, I wrote it again. It is about the name of today.
Those apple trees are growing near Budapest, Hungary. We call today hétfő; ‘hét’ meaning seven or week and ‘fő’ meaning primary, main or head.
Back in the days
In ancient Europe, the week started with the day of the sun (dies solis), followed by the day of the moon (dies lunae).
In old English, the name mōnandæg and mōndæg literally meant moon’s day, which has cognates in several Germanic languages.
Similar loan translations can be found throughout Eurasia.
In many Slavic languages, it is an interpretation of after Sunday/holiday. When literally translated, the Russian понедельник (ponyedyelnik) means next to the week.
In Turkish, pazartesi means after Sunday.
Using numbers
In Greek and Portugese the name reminisces the tradition of numbering the days, which was an attempt to stay away from pagan sounding names using biblical ones. The week started on Sunday, today is called the second. Also, in many liturgical calendars, Monday is still referred to as feria secunda.
In Arabic and n Modern Hebrew it translates to day two.
Korean and Japanese language adopted the name, day of the moon, from Ancient Chinese; whereas in Mandarin Chinese it is called day one of the week.
Indo-Aryan languages, like Bengali, Hindi and Urdu use a loan translation of the sanskrit name for Monday.
Originally, it was a much longer text.
Then I thought, six other days are yet to come this week. Let’s continue tomorrow.
Some say it’s the second, some say it’s the third day of the week.
Sleep tight!