Thor - Name

Name

Old Norse Þórr, Old English Þunor and Old High German Donar are cognates within Germanic, descending from a Common Germanic *þonaroz or *þunraz, meaning "thunder". The names of the Gaulish god of thunder, Toran or Taran and the Irish god Tuireann are also related.

The name Thor is the origin of the name Thursday. By employing a practice known as interpretatio germanica during the Roman Empire period, the Germanic peoples adopted the Roman weekly calendar, and replaced the names of Roman gods with their own. Latin dies Iovis ("day of Jupiter") was converted into Proto-Germanic *Þonares dagaz ("Thor's day"), from which stems modern English "Thursday" and all other Germanic weekday cognates.

Beginning in the Viking Age, personal names containing the theonym Thōrr are recorded with great frequency. Prior to the Viking Age, no known examples are recorded. Thórr-based names may have flourished during the Viking Age as a defiant response to attempts at Christianization, similar to the widescale Viking Age practice of wearing Thor's hammer pendants.

By way of Viking Age Scandinavian settlement in England, the name of the Old Norse form of the deity was introduced into Old English as Þór, apparently overtaking the native form of the deity's name, Þunor. However, the modern spelling Thor is an anglicization of the Old Norse name by way of antiquarian interest in the Viking Age in the 17th century.