French single word for “Friday’s Child”?
July 5, 2019 12:26 PM   Subscribe

I remember seeing and writing down somewhere a word in French that means “Friday’s child” (born on Friday, derived from the popular nursery rhyme). It wasn’t “l'enfant du vendredi“, it was just one word I believe. Anyone?
posted by jitterbug perfume to Writing & Language (5 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Vénusien / vénusienne?

Seems a bit disputed as to how "genuine" (how important this is for the French language!) such adjectival coinings are, but that link has some examples of this form for other days of the week as well.
posted by protorp at 12:54 PM on July 5, 2019 [3 favorites]


I'm a French native speaker, and I've never heard of any of the three suites of adjectives in protorp's link.

There's no equivalent to the Monday's Child nursery rhyme in French culture, and so we don't really have that concept of "Friday's child", let alone a word for it, afaik.
posted by snakeling at 2:39 PM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


Is it an adjective or could it be a name? For instance, Afua?
posted by Knowyournuts at 4:24 PM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]


so we don't really have that concept of "Friday's child", let alone a word for it, afaik.

A lot of the cultures France colonized in West Africa do, though, and have names in their own languages based on days children are born, so it's entirely possible some folks created a translation into French that never really trickled back to Europe.
posted by solotoro at 8:00 PM on July 5, 2019 [6 favorites]


Friday's child is loving and giving. Does this help any french linguists who need to know the reference?
posted by Enid Lareg at 10:07 AM on July 6, 2019 [2 favorites]


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