Etymology of Finnish Days of the Week

[lifecry]

Hey all,

Disclaimer: I'm an absolute beginner in my Finnish studies, and if the answer to these questions are obvious, I humbly cry your pardon.
At the moment I'm learning basic things like counting, simple nouns, and ( relevant to this thread ), days of the week. In practicing them, I couldn't help noticing two things;

1) Words for a few of the days seem suspiciously similar to those of Germanic languages. First and foremost, Torstai. Is it a coincidence that it seems a lot like "Thor's Day", AKA Thursday? Then we have Sunnuntai followed by Maanantai....Hmmmm.. Am I to believe these are etymologically unrelated to Sunday and Monday

2) Keskiviikko, while admittedly not sounding anything like Wednesday, has the obvious distinction of being the only Finnish day of the week not ending in "tai". I'm sure there must be a good reason for this, and I'm very much looking forward to finding out why. Is this a mark of honor for dear old Hump Day, a branding of shame, or something more arcane?

Thanks in advance for humoring me and my curious/ignorant self!

[mtomato]

Hey all,

Disclaimer: I'm an absolute beginner in my Finnish studies, and if the answer to these questions are obvious, I humbly cry your pardon.
At the moment I'm learning basic things like counting, simple nouns, and ( relevant to this thread ), days of the week. In practicing them, I couldn't help noticing two things;

1) Words for a few of the days seem suspiciously similar to those of Germanic languages. First and foremost, Torstai. Is it a coincidence that it seems a lot like "Thor's Day", AKA Thursday? Then we have Sunnuntai followed by Maanantai....Hmmmm.. Am I to believe these are etymologically unrelated to Sunday and Monday

2) Keskiviikko, while admittedly not sounding anything like Wednesday, has the obvious distinction of being the only Finnish day of the week not ending in "tai". I'm sure there must be a good reason for this, and I'm very much looking forward to finding out why. Is this a mark of honor for dear old Hump Day, a branding of shame, or something more arcane?

Thanks in advance for humoring me and my curious/ignorant self!

1) It should be fairly obvious that the words aren't etymologically unrelated.
Torstai most likely came from the Swedish torsdag (Thor's day).
According to the Finnish wikipedia, the etymology of the word maanantai is in the ancient Scandinavian word mánandagr (moon day).

2) The word keskiviikko (literally mid-week) simply comes from the day being in the middle of the week (the OLD week, which started on Sunday).

[lifecry]

Thanks for the reply, and for confirming my suspicions, mtomato.
As silly as it may seem to want to know these things when I haven't even mastered the basics of the language, having this kind of background makes it easier for me to remember for some reason.

[onkko]

http://kirlah-kielet.blogspot.com/2007/ ... kuper.html

Maanantai, moons day from old germanic.
Tiistai, tyrs*/tiws* day from old germanic.
Keskiviikko, middle week from germany
Torstai, thors* day from old germanic.
Perjantai, freijas* day from old germanic, i cant see how it changed to perjantai but thats what he says.
Lauantai, from old swedish logh what means washing.
Sunnuntai, south germanic/latin. Day of sun.

*) old nordic gods

[Upphew]

Lauantai, from old swedish logh what means washing.

Viikonpäivien nimistä lauantai on toiseksi vanhin. Nimenä se on yhteispohjoismainen ja samamerkityksellinen; pesupäivä. Muinaisnorjan laugardagr (laug, kylpy, pesuvesi) samoin Islannista Viroon sekä Vatjaan ja siis meidän perinteinen saunapäivämme. Lauantai oli roomalaisilla Saturnuksen päivä (dies Saturni). Englannin Saturday tulee myös tästä.

[Rob A.]

Perjantai, freijas* day from old germanic, i cant see how it changed to perjantai but thats what he says.

And that's not surprising...I don't think the guy gave a very complete explanation. I think it is related to the word, perkele....from Baltic languages...Perkunas....The Baltic "God of Thunder".... I think you can probably "back-engineer" perjan ...a genitive form for perka, which isn't very far from perkele/perkunas... And all this, including the word piru, are related. They shifted meaning as part of the early efforts of the Christian Church to discredit the old pre-Christian gods.....

So the Finnish days of the week would appear to have two "Gods of Thunder" from different sources....

And, yes, keskiviikko, is a calque from German...which for some reason didn't hang on to the usual "odin"/"wodin" reference for this particular day. And while Finland and the other Nordic countries decided Saturday was "Washing Day"...English, and some of the other Germanic languages, hung onto the old Roman god....

The Finnish days of the week are easy enough to figure out...what puzzles me is why Finland, almost alone among European countries, didn't adopt the Roman names for the months of the year....

[Bavarian]

The Finnish days of the week are easy enough to figure out...what puzzles me is why Finland, almost alone among European countries, didn't adopt the Roman names for the months of the year....

Czech, Polish, Lithuanian, and I believe Ukrainian didn't adopt the Roman names either.

[Rob A.]

The Finnish days of the week are easy enough to figure out...what puzzles me is why Finland, almost alone among European countries, didn't adopt the Roman names for the months of the year....

Czech, Polish, Lithuanian, and I believe Ukrainian didn't adopt the Roman names either.

Yes...I see that...not so universal as I supposed.... And surprising that such a strongly Catholic country as Poland didn't adapt the Latin names... Probably didn't matter as the priests and the various proceedings would have used Latin...though I might be wrong again...I don't know too much about the religious history of Poland...

[jahasjahas]

Perjantai, freijas* day from old germanic, i cant see how it changed to perjantai but thats what he says.

From the comments on the blog post:

Mutta esim. Veijo Merellä (Sanojen synty) on toinenkin selitys: kreikan paraskeye tarkoittaa lepopäivää, jota myös ruots. ja saksan nykysanat tarkoittavatkin. Muinaisbaijerissa sana on ollut pferingtag.
Tätä viime mainittua selitystä tukisi myös Elias Wessenin maininta, että fredag-sanalla ei voi olla kielellistä yhteyttä Frigg- ja Fröja-sanojen kanssa.

Checking a proper etymological dictionary instead of googling might help us. Anybody have one?

[AldenG]

I hadn't know that about lördag / lauantai.

My wife said that as a girl she associated lauantai to saunan lauteet.

[kalmisto]

At the moment I'm learning basic things like counting....

Can you count in Finnish ? : http://www.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~kmatsum/cor ... choice=fin

[Bavarian]

My wife said that as a girl she associated lauantai to saunan lauteet.

I'm wrong again as usual when it comes to Finnish, but when I see a bunch of vowels together as in lauantai, I find myself thinking that it's another example of [expletive deleted] consonant gradation and that a K has gone missing somewhere. But there doesn't seem to be a lauka.

[Rob A.]

Perjantai, freijas* day from old germanic, i cant see how it changed to perjantai but thats what he says.

From the comments on the blog post:

Mutta esim. Veijo Merellä (Sanojen synty) on toinenkin selitys: kreikan paraskeye tarkoittaa lepopäivää, jota myös ruots. ja saksan nykysanat tarkoittavatkin. Muinaisbaijerissa sana on ollut pferingtag.
Tätä viime mainittua selitystä tukisi myös Elias Wessenin maininta, että fredag-sanalla ei voi olla kielellistä yhteyttä Frigg- ja Fröja-sanojen kanssa.

Checking a proper etymological dictionary instead of googling might help us. Anybody have one?

Well, actually I do...I had forgotten about it... You know.."If it ain't online, it ain't real"...

Nykysuomen etymologinen sanakirja which I had bought at the Akateeminen kirjakauppa when I was over there.... But the entry for perjantai, refers to the goddess, Frigg and the old Swedish name freadagher. Somehow I'm not convinced that that is the origin , though this book certainly has more credibility than I do...

Oh well... The Finnish word has been in use since Agricola's day...so I suppose its origins are lost in the mists of a pre-literate, pre-Christian Finland...

[AldenG]

Another friggin' goddess?

[skandagupta]

fre > per in finnic. unfinnic double consonant and "foreign" f.