Wednesday, I just posted an article and for
some reason had never noticed that the cor-
rect hyphenation for that word is Wednes-
day. Annoying & weird, but if one finds that
6 letter syllable annoying, you'll probably ...

.... be avoiding the following most annoying
words from the standpoint of lengthy sylla-
ble:

List of the longest English words
with one syllable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_longest_English_words_with_one_syllable

Anyway, curious about Wednesday, I looked
up where the names of the days comes from.
I don't recall ever thinking about that before
today, albeit having been alive for over 66
years, you'd think I would have looked this
up before. If I did, I forgot about it.

I suppose my having been raised deeply
steeped in Southern Baptist philosophies,
& raised in a secular school influenced by
folks generally deeply steeped in conserv-
ative christian perspectives, not likely any
authority figures cared that the origin of ...

.... the days of the week are based on non-
christian deities, & that would have likely
been a verboten topic, so verboten that I
don't recall hearing about it 'til looking it
up just now.

---
January 1 2018

Why Wednesday? The days of the week
have a convoluted religious heritage
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/02/why-wednesday-the-days-of-the-week-have-a-convoluted-religious-heritage
---

The Romans may have got the ball rolling
with a seven-day week adopted by the early
church, but weekday names in English owe
as much to Anglo-Saxon gods

The origins of our days of the week lie with
the Romans. The Romans named their days
of the week after the planets, which in turn
were named after the Roman gods:

dies Solis “the day of the sun (then considered
a planet)”

dies Lunae “the day of the moon”

dies Martis, “the day of Mars”

dies Mercurii, “the day of Mercury”

dies Iovis, “the day of Jupiter”

dies Veneris, “the day of Venus”

dies Saturni, “the day of Saturn”

When the Germanic-speaking peoples of western
Europe adopted the seven-day week, which was
probably in the early centuries of the christian era,
they named their days after those of their own gods
who were closest in attributes and character to the
Roman deities.

It was one of those peoples, the Anglo-Saxons, that
brought their gods and language (what would be-
come English) to the British Isles during the fifth &
sixth centuries AD.

In English, Saturday, Sunday and Monday are named
for Saturn, the sun and moon respectively, following
the Latin.

The remaining 4 days (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
& Friday) are named for gods that the Anglo-Saxons
probably worshipped before they migrated to England
& during the short time before they converted to Chris-
tianity after that.

Tuesday is named for the god Tiw, about whom rela-
tively little is known. Tiw was probably associated with
warfare, just like the Roman god Mars.

Wednesday is named for the god Woden, who is paral-
leled with the Roman god Mercury, probably because
both gods shared attributes of eloquence, the ability
to travel, and the guardianship of the dead.

Thursday is Thunor’s day, or, to give the word its Old
English form, Thunresdæg “the day of Thunder”. This
sits beside the Latin dies Iovis, the day of Jove or
Jupiter. Both of these gods are associated with thun-
der in their respective mythologies.

You may recognise a similarity here with the name
of the famous Norse god Thor. This may be more
than coincidence. Vikings arrived in England in the
ninth century, bringing their own very similar gods
with them.

Anglo-Saxons were already christian by this time,
but may have recognised the similarity between the
name of their ancestors’ deity Thunor and the Norse
god. We don’t know, but the word Thor does appear
in written texts from the period.

Friday is the only weekday named for a female deity,
Frig, who is hardly mentioned anywhere else in early
English. The name does appear, however, as a com-
mon noun meaning “love, affection” in poetry.

That is why Frig was chosen to pair with the Roman
deity Venus, who was likewise associated with love
& sex, & was commemorated in the Latin name for
Friday.

....

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