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 Post subject: OK, Brain thing!
PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 9:46 am 
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adorabalicious
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So we have the days of the week mostly named for Norse mythology.
Thory, Freya, Wotan etc etc

Why did we go with Norse for something we use all the time instead of something else more impacting on Western Civ like Roman, Germanic, hell even Saxon or Gaul?

Did the Norse names come to use because they were the only ones to give names to specific days?

I mean what happened here? :psyduck: :psyduck: :psyduck: :psyduck:

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 10:01 am 
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Noli me calcare
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I would say that the Germanic people's heavy influence on the English (Old and Middle) language gave us the naming conventions we use. The Germans got the conventions from the Romans, who got them from the Greeks. Pretty much historical business as usual.

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 10:41 am 
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Vindicarre wrote:
I would say that the Germanic people's heavy influence on the English (Old and Middle) language gave us the naming conventions we use. The Germans got the conventions from the Romans, who got them from the Greeks. Pretty much historical business as usual.

This. In Latin, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday are Dies Lunae (goddess of the moon), Dies Martis (Mars), Dies Mercurii (Mercury), Dies Iovis (Jove, or Jupiter), Dies Veneris (Venus), Dies Saturni (Saturn), and Dies Solis (Sol, god of the sun).

The Germanic tribes picked this up and chose analogous gods in their own pantheon to name days after. So we swap Mars, god of war, for Tyr, god of heroism and glorious combat; Mercury gets traded for Odin, both poets and psychopomps. Thor and Jupiter are both gods of thunder; Frigg and Venus both goddesses of beauty and sex.

Old English, then, is a Germanic tongue, not a Romantic (Latin-derived) one. So we got the Scandinavian pantheon substitutes. Not sure why we kept Saturday, and why we dropped the dieties and went straight to the celestial domains for Sunday and Monday.

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 Post subject: Re: Re:
PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 11:27 am 
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Noli me calcare
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Kaffis Mark V wrote:
Vindicarre wrote:
Not sure why we kept Saturday, and why we dropped the dieties and went straight to the celestial domains for Sunday and Monday.


Many of the Germanic mythologies deify the Sun and Moon as Sol and Mani, so you get both deity and celestial in those cases, I guess.

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 11:35 am 
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Vindicarre wrote:
Kaffis Mark V wrote:
Vindicarre wrote:
Not sure why we kept Saturday, and why we dropped the dieties and went straight to the celestial domains for Sunday and Monday.


Many of the Germanic mythologies deify the Sun and Moon as Sol and Mani, so you get both deity and celestial in those cases, I guess.

Aha. That's the piece I was missing. It didn't occur to me that, duh, those darn pagans would directly worship the celestial bodies. ;)

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PostPosted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 12:11 pm 
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Noli me calcare
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:spit:

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 Post subject: Re: OK, Brain thing!
PostPosted: Fri Oct 10, 2014 10:05 am 
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The Reason
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--->What Kaffis said

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 Post subject: Re: OK, Brain thing!
PostPosted: Mon Oct 13, 2014 10:55 am 
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As far as the Saturday thing...

Old English days of the week sounded pretty much the same as Scandinavian ones and Germanic ones, with the exception of Saturday. Saturday is lørdag in Scandinavia, and means bath day. The Saxons didn't bathe weekly like the Vikings did and presumably wouldn't have named a day after it, so they just stuck with the Romans there.


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