Monday - Etymology

Etymology

The English noun Monday derived sometime before 1200 from monedæi, which itself developed from Old English (around 1000) mōnandæg and mōndæg (literally meaning "moon's day"), which is cognate to other Germanic languages, including Old Frisian mōnadeig, Middle Low German and Middle Dutch mānendach (modern Dutch Maandag), Old High German mānetag (modern German Montag), and Old Norse mánadagr (Swedish and Norwegian nynorsk måndag, Icelandic mánudagur. Danish and Norwegian bokmål mandag). The Germanic term is a Germanic interpretation of Latin lunae dies ("day of the moon").

In many Slavic languages the name of the day eschews pagan tradition and translates as "after Sunday/holiday". Russian понедельник (ponyedyelnik), Serbian понедељак (ponedeljak), Bulgarian понеделник (ponedelnik), Polish poniedziałek, Czech pondělí, Slovak pondelok, Slovenian ponedeljek. In Turkish it is called pazartesi, which means the day after Sunday. Japanese and Korean share the same ancient Chinese words '月曜日' (Hiragana:げつようび, Hangul:월요일) for Monday which means day of the moon.

In many Languages of India, the word for Monday is derived from Sanskrit Sōmavāra. Soma is another name of the Moon god in Hinduism. In some languages of India it is also called Chandravāra, Chandra in Sanskrit means moon. In Thailand the day is called "Wan Jan" meaning, the day of the Moon god Chandra".

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