As the days go by, the cycle of the week shapes how we live our lives. Have you ever asked yourself, “Why does a week have seven days?” or “Where do the names for each day of the week come from?”
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The seven-day week has origin in calendar of the Babylonians, which in turn is based on a Sumerian calendar dating to the 21st century BC. Seven days corresponds to the time it takes for a moon to alternate between each phase: full, waning, new and waxing. Since the moon's cycle lasts 29.53 days, the Babylonians inserted one or two days into the final week of each month.
Jewish tradition also observed a seven-day week. The book of Genesis (and therefore the seven days of creation account) was probably written around 500 BC during the Jewish exile in Babylon. Assyriologists such as Friedrich Delitzsch and Marcello Craveri have suggested that the Jews inherited the seven-day cycle of the Babylonian calendar.
The Romans also inherited this system from the Babylonian tradition, although they didn't start using it until the installation of the Julian calendar in the 1st century BC. Up to this point the Romans had used the "nundinal cycle".
This was a system that the Romans inherited from the Etruscans. This was an eight-day market cycle, labeled AH. On market day, peasants would come to town and buy eight days' worth of supplies. When the seven-day week was officially adopted by Constantine in AD 321, the nundinal cycle fell out of favor.
The Romans named the days of the week after their gods, which corresponded to the five known planets, plus the sun and moon (which the Romans also considered to be planets).
To this day, all Romance languages still bear the imprint of Roman day names, the exception being Sunday, which now translates to "Day of the Lord" and Saturday, which translates to "Sabbath".
| Day | Planet | Latin | Spanish | French | Italian |
| Monday | Moon | Dies Lunae | moons | lundi | lunedi |
| Third | Mars | dies martis | martes | mardi | hammered |
| Wednesday | Mercury | Dies Mercurii | miércoles | mercredi | mercoledì |
| Thursday | Jupiter | dies jovis | jueves | jeudi | giovedi |
| Friday | Venus | Dies Veneris | viernes | vendredi | worship |
| Saturday | Saturn | Dies Saturni | Saturday | samedi | sabbath |
| Sunday | Sun | dies solis | Sunday | dimanche | domenica |