The names of the days have been well known to all of us since we were born. We use them without thinking about their meanings and origins and do not think about their changes in the past. Most often people do not know that until 1976 Sunday was the first day of the week in Christian and Jewish countries. With the DIN-Standardization 1355 Monday became the first day of the week, bound to the UNO decision ISO 8601 in 19731. Though of the world wide decision of the UNO England, Northern America and other countries still count the Sunday as the first day of the week. Even the Islam still use the seven day system with Sunday as the starting day.
The arrangement of the seven day system goes back to the moon cycle of 28 days. Full moon, decreasing half moon, new moon and increasing half moon are the four states that gives us an arrangement of four seven day systems. The naming of the week days goes back to the egocentric world view where the earth is the centre of the universe. The seven viewable planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon were used to name the seven week days.
Table of content
1. Introduction
2. The various expressions for “Thursday”
2.1 Iconym “sun of the highest God” + “day”
2.2 Iconym “ fifth day“
2.3 Iconym “after” + “Wednesday”
3. Triggering forces of lexical change in the case of Thursday
3.1 Lexical acculturation
3.2 Primary and secondary accommodation
4 Final remarks
5 Bibliography
Abstract:
Diese Seminararbeit untersucht die Motivation, welche hinter der Namensgebung für den Begriff „Donnerstag“ steckt. Jedes Ikonym (Motiv) wird einzeln untersucht, beginnend mit dem häufigsten und endend mit den weniger vorkommenden. Diese onomasiologische Arbeit zeigt den Wandel des Wortes auf und erläutert die dahintersteckenden Begriffe, setzt sie in Bezug zum analysierenden Wort und führt diese aus.
Die onomasiologische Herangehensweise, vom Konzept zu den verschiedenen Lexemen wird durch einen geschichtshistorischen Zusatz erweitert und verdeutlicht.
Es gibt zwei große Konzepte für den Begriff Donnerstag in den verschiedenen Sprachen und Dialekten des germanischen Einzugsbereiches. Zu untersuchende Sprachen waren Deutsch, Englisch, Finnisch, Norwegisch, Schwedisch, Niederländisch, Dänisch, Isländisch und Österreichisch.
Die wohl häufigsten Motivationen sind „Thor’s Tag“ (eine Ersetzung von dies iovis) gefolgt von „fünfter Tag“ ( eine Nachbildung des griechischen pempte hemera).
Es werden auch innerhalb einer Sprache Veränderungen während der Jahrhunderte aufgedeckt und untersucht.
1. Introduction:
The names of the days have been well known to all of us since we were born. We use them without thinking about their meanings and origins and do not think about their changes in the past. Most often people do not know that until 1976 Sunday was the first day of the week in Christian and Jewish countries. With the DIN-Standardization 1355 Monday became the first day of the week, bound to the UNO decision ISO 8601 in 19731. Though of the world wide decision of the UNO England, Northern America and other countries still count the Sunday as the first day of the week. Even the Islam still use the seven day system with Sunday as the starting day.
The arrangement of the seven day system goes back to the moon cycle of 28 days. Full moon, decreasing half moon, new moon and increasing half moon are the four states that gives us an arrangement of four seven day systems. The naming of the week days goes back to the egocentric world view where the earth is the centre of the universe. The seven viewable planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon were used to name the seven week days.
Whereas the Jewish regions already used the seven week day system the Greeks and the Romans still used a system of ten days per week. During the second century BC the Jewish system came from Alexandria to Greek and replaced the decades (lat. Deca = ten)[1]. Even the Romans adopted the seven day week system with the names of the planets but committed them to fix Saturday as the first day in contrary to the Jewish system where it was the seventh day. Until the third century AD the Christians already used the Jewish system and with the fourth century they fixed the Sunday to be the first day to put a religious sense into the system by connecting the first day with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Christians tried to reintroduce the old Jewish week day system in order to abandon the
heathen system but it was just fixed in the liturgy with dies dominica as the first day. The weekdays were called feriae:
- Monday= feria secunda,
- Tuesday = feria tertia,
- Wednesday = feria quarta,
- Thursday = feria quinta,
- Friday = feria sexta,
- Saturday = Feria septima or sabbati.
The Germanic tribes adopted the Latin week day system in the third to the fifth centuries. In the beginning Allemanic tribes brought the system to the southern border of the Limes, afterwards to the lower Rhine regions and brought them finally up to the Scandinavian areas.
(Grzega: 2001)
When the Germanic tribes adopted the system, the names of the days where changed because they considered them as Roman God names. As a result similar expressions of Germanic Gods where used to replace Latin names. This can be seen at Dies Mercurii that became Onsdag or Wodansdag which are still used in Swedish, Dutch and Norwegian because of the Germanic God Odin for whom Wodan is a common expression.
Wodansdag might even exist today in the English word Wednesday. In southern Germanic regions no expressions for the God exist in their name of Dies mercurii. Maybe they were confronted with the ecclesiastical Latin media hebdomas or the Greek equivalent. This phenomenon will become interesting later when southern Germanic dialects are discussed. Further on the Roman languages do still have their connection to dies Jovis, the day of Jupiter: French jeudi; ital. Giovedi; span. Juéves.
This paper is based on the work with dictionaries of different nations and dictionaries of dialects like the Survey of English Dialects (SED). The Buck, Thesaurus of Old English, and the Norwegisch Dänisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch were a great help but additionally I want to thank the people who helped be with different expressions in dialects. For further information on the used books have a look at the references.
Whereas most articles sum up the whole week system with the names of the days this article will just deal with “Thursday” , its etymology and the motivation for the name giving process in different Germanic dialects.
2. The various expressions for “Thursday”
Similar to Dies Mercurii, dies Jovis was considered as a Roman God by the Germanic tribes who replaced them by the names of Germanic Gods the son of Wodan called Thor or Donar. Thor is the God of thunder, lightening and thunderstorms and protects the humankind and the Gods against giants and threats like the snail of Mudguard. His most important weapon is the hammer which he uses to hit against the clouds to create thunder and rain why he additionally is the God of fertility (Wägner 1934: 9).
The standard expressions of the Indo- European Languages are taken from the Buck (1949: 1066ff). This paper as described above will deal with the standard expressions in Germanic languages and some dialect ones. The various expressions will be grouped according to their iconyms that are based on their motives or original semantic opponents. It must not be mixed up with the term etymon as Grzega (2001) already showed.
OHG[2] Donarestag and OE Þunrestag have the same iconym but are different in their etymon which are Donar and Thor.
Additionally the phonetic history will give a good insight of the development of the expressions throughout history.
2.1 Iconym “sun of the highest God“ + ”day“
OHG Donarestag/ Donaristag[3]
MHG Donerstag[4]
NHG Donnerstag4 Dialects : Dunnastog, Donnastog, Dunnerstag, Dunschtig, Donnerschtich
OE Þunresdaeg[5]
ME Thuresdai[6]
NE Thursday[7]
Swed. Torsdag7 dialects: thorsdag, Toorsdag, torsdag, torsdagen
Danish torsdag[8]
OIcel. Porsdagr[9]
Norw. Torsdag7 dialects: taarsdag
Dutch donderstag7
Fries. tongersdei9
Motivation:
The motive of the given words is the Germanic God Thor in the upper north regions and Donar in the lower areas whose name stands for the eldest son of Odin the highest God having a hammer to protect the people.
Old Norse is the Norwegian language as written and spoken c.100 to 1500 C.E., the relevant phase of it being "Viking Norse" (700-1100)[10] the language spoken by the invaders and colonizers of northern and eastern England c.875-950. This was before the rapid divergence of West Norse (Norway and the colonies) and East Norse (Denmark and Sweden), so the language of the Vikings in England was essentially the same, whether they came from Denmark or from Norway.
[...]
[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalenderwoche
[2] In the following I will use these abbreviations: OHG = Old High Germanic, MHG = Middle High Germanic, NHG = New High Germanic, HG = High Germanic OE = Old English, ME = Middle English, NE = New English, Swed. = Swedish, Icel. = Icelandic, OIcel. = Old Icelandic, OFris. = Old Frislandic, ONorw. = Old Norwegian, Norw. = Norwegian, NDutch = New Dutch, MDutch. = Middle Dutch,
[3] Grosse 1997
[4] Kluge 2002
[5] Holthausen 1934
[6] Kurath 1969 640 f.
[7] Buck 1949 : 1007 ff.
[8] Falk 1960
[9] Falk 1960
[10] http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/eieol/norol-0-X.html (22.03.2006)
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