It startles me sometimes to look back on my public education and realize that no one ever bothers to explain why some words, even ones we use every day of our lives, look so bizarre and unfamiliar if separated from their context.

Days of the week are a great example. Okay, “Sun-day,” I could get on my own. No problem. But what about “Tues” or “Thurs?” If you’ve ever spelled the word “Wednesday” wrong because you have no idea what a Wednes is or why it gets its own day, read on, my friend (or, if you do know, you’ll probably read on anyway, because this kind of thing fascinates you already).

So it all started with the Babylonians (those cheeky bastards), and maybe the Hebrews, but mostly the Babylonians. They marked their holy days (holidays) based on the lunar cycle. The first day after the new moon, predictably, was referred to as the Moon’s Day. They had one holy day every seventh day, which was roughly a quarter of the lunar cycle, with the big’un occurring on the 28th day. Seven-day weeks were thus born (borne?). They spread like wildfire from there. You know, the kind of wildfire that takes thousands of years to spread.

It was the Greeks and later the Romans who were largely responsible for setting our current format. They named the days after planets — specifically, the five planets visible to the naked eye: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn (as well as the moon and the sun).

They took on the seven-day week with the onset of Christianization in Constantine’s rule, since the Christians were using the Hebrew system already, and from there it caught on (or was forced on) throughout Europe, including the United Kingdom (not yet united, but known as Breton, Wales, Celtland, etc.) and parts of Asia.

In some regions of China, these five planets were associated with the five Chinese elements: fire for Mars, water for Mercury, wood for Jupiter, metal for Venus, and earth (small “e”) for Saturn. So you’d have a “Fire Day” or “Metal Day.” Iron Maiden fans would approve of that, I should think.

The northern Europe folk — Germanic tribes, Saxons, and Scandinavians — did their conversion a little differently, though. Instead of naming the days after the planets, like China, they named the days after corresponding pagan deities from the Norse pantheon.

• Latin solis became Germanic Sunna, their sun goddess.
• Latin luna became Germanic Máni, an equivalent moon god.
• Warlike Mars most closely related to Norse Týr, a one-handed god associated with one-on-one combat and the fulfillment of oaths. (All of the Norse gods are pretty warlike, though, so they might have stuck anyone in there.)
• Fleet-footed, mischievous Mercury somehow turned into Wodan (or Odin), the wise, one-eyed father of the Norse gods who, while a bit on the mischievous side, seems somewhat an ill fit to the wing-footed Roman. A much better analog would’ve been Loki, the trickster — at least in my opinion. I’ll elaborate more once we get through the rest. In Iceland, they just called the day “mid-week day,” which seems to be coming back into fashion with “hump day.” I’m not sure that Odin approves, but you never know. It’s hard to tell with Odin.
• Mighty Jupiter, leader of the Roman pantheon, became Thor, whom you might recognize from his recent appearance in one or two comic book films. While Thor is something of a leader among his peers, he defers to his father Odin. The main connection between Thor and Jupiter is their mutual control of thunder. Indeed, the words Thor and thunder are very closely related.
• Goddess of love and passion, Venus, translated into Fríge, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of sex and fertility based on Norse Freyja and/or Frigg. (The distinction between the two is not particularly strong; in mythology, like in contemporary popular culture, women were often lumped together and grossly underrepresented.) Fríge is part of the root for the word “freedom,” so if you’re feeling very patriotic, you could get away with calling Friday “Freedom Day,” were you so inclined. It is for us nine-to-fivers, anyway, amirite?
• Saturn, the Roman god who fathered most of the major players on Olympus and subsequently tried to eat them, didn’t get a pagan equivalent. He just got fast-tracked through into keeping his day name in Old English. What probably happened was that the Germans called the day “Day before Sunday,” and the Scandinavians called it “laundry day,” so nobody bothered to update the Celts and the Bretons, who were still using the Roman names during the various Viking conquests. There’s no Norse god of laundry, after all. Still, seems like Odin would be a natural fit here instead of subbing in for Mercury, don’t you think?

So my theory is that Odin, using the future sight he gained from carving out his eye and throwing it into Mímir’s Well, saw this whole seven-day-naming thing coming. He saw that his natural analog, Saturn, fell on laundry day, of all days, and groaned. “But I don’t want to be the laundry god!”

Sneaky bastard that he is, Odin strolled on up to the ambitious Loki and said, “Hey, boy, I’ve been thinking. You seem headed for great things, and I wanted help you out. There’s a new kind of week heading our way, and low on the totem as you are, you’d be lucky to get, say, the third day out of seven, if even that.”

“Oh no, not hump day!”

“Precisely, m’boy. Precisely. So, I’m willing to trade with you. I’m slated to take on the big spot. The one currently held by the biggest, most ferocious, hungriest god of the Roman pantheon. But, I can let you switch with me for a very modest price. What’s the name of that horse you, uh, birthed? Sleipnir, was it?”

After the deal was made, Loki read the fine print, and decided that no day was worth being the laundry god.