If Uranus and Neptune had their own days of the week....
January 19, 2015 1:31 PM Subscribe
...then what would the names of those days be? I started wondering about that after reading this Wikipedia article about the names of the days of the week.
I'm not knowledgeable enough about tracing the origins of words to know exactly what the histories of the names of the days of the week are, but they all seem to have ancient Germanic or Olde English origins. I'm guessing those languages wouldn't have names for Neptune and Uranus, because those planets were unheard of then. Well, I didn't have any luck looking them up at any rate.
Is there anyone on MeFi who is knowledgeable enough about languages to say what the names of these hypothetical days should be? Or even someone who just has a good intuition about these sorts of things? If experts were considering the problem of naming two new days of the week after Uranus and Neptune, what would their procedure be? The best I can come up with are Uranday and Neptday, but those don't seem quite right somehow....
I'm not knowledgeable enough about tracing the origins of words to know exactly what the histories of the names of the days of the week are, but they all seem to have ancient Germanic or Olde English origins. I'm guessing those languages wouldn't have names for Neptune and Uranus, because those planets were unheard of then. Well, I didn't have any luck looking them up at any rate.
Is there anyone on MeFi who is knowledgeable enough about languages to say what the names of these hypothetical days should be? Or even someone who just has a good intuition about these sorts of things? If experts were considering the problem of naming two new days of the week after Uranus and Neptune, what would their procedure be? The best I can come up with are Uranday and Neptday, but those don't seem quite right somehow....
Best answer: Alternatively, the etymology of Uranus (according to Wikipedia, but I'm a linguist, and it sounds plausible) is from the Proto Indo European root *ṷers- "to moisten, to drip" (because he was the rainmaker/fertiliser), so the equivalent Old Norse form (cognate) is "ver". Obviously historically the Norse would not have equated the god Uranus with their word "ver", rather they would have looked for a god to equate him with, as sparklemotion describes. But if there's no obvious one, then in your scenario of modern people wanting to create a good-sounding day name after Uranus, then "Versday" would work well.
posted by lollusc at 5:30 PM on January 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by lollusc at 5:30 PM on January 19, 2015 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Well, if I'm only going to get two answers, at least they're really good ones. Thanks :)
posted by sam_harms at 12:42 PM on January 20, 2015
posted by sam_harms at 12:42 PM on January 20, 2015
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But, based on that Wikipedia article, the Germanic names that we ended up had a lot to do with associating Greco-Roman gods with their equivalents in Norse mythology.
So, Neptune, being the god of the sea might be associated with Ægir, making a Aegsday or Aesday or something like that.
Uranus is a little trickier. He was the god of the Sky, but then again, so was Thor (Thursday). Maybe go with Sif (Thor's wife) for Sifsday?
posted by sparklemotion at 1:49 PM on January 19, 2015 [4 favorites]