Did you know that the name Saturday comes from the planet Saturn? A high percentage of weddings happen on Saturday because of the connection between the rings of Saturn and wedding rings. Saturn has 31 known moons. Titan, Enceladus, Mimas, Dione, Rhea, Tethys, Iapetus, Pan, Helene, Hyperion, Janis, Phoebe, Epimethus, Pandora, Calypso, Telesto, Prometheus, Methone, Anthe, Pallene, Atlas, Paaliaq, Daphnis, Polydeuces, Siarnaq, Ymir, Tarvos, Narvi, Bebhionn, Skathi and the other one. Bugger it, you can Google that one for yourselves! Mundilfari is too difficult to spell anyway. The word diarrhoea comes from the names of Saturns 4th and 5th moons. You see, its all about rings and moons. Some may try to link in Uranus here, but that has 5 major moons; Miranda, Titania, Oberon, Ariel and Umbriel. These are all named after Shakespearean characters, which is clear and conclusive proof that Shakespeares plays were all written before the Universe was created. Uranus has 20 other moons, the next of which is Puck and the list goes on, but I am not here to talk about Shakespeare or the universe. Thursday is named after Thor, the god of thunder, right? Wrong, Thursday is named after Thor, the god of domestic chores and general purpose handymen, which is why he is sometimes depicted as carrying a hammer, and sometimes depicted as carrying a 2800ml professional pedal switch vertical hanging steam household electric clothes iron. Thor travels a lot. Sunday is rather annoyingly, straightforwardly named after the sun. Tuesday is named after Tiw a Norse god who apparently had one of his hands rather unceremoniously removed by a giant wolf. That doesnt seem particularly plausible to me, so I prefer to think that the wolf story was just something he made up to tell his mum and dad. Tiw; if I could have a moment of your very precious Norse god time, your mother and I have noticed over the last few days that you havent been carrying around that hand we gave you. No Dad, here it is said Tiw, holding up the remaining mitten, complete with hand and all expected digits (it gets cold in Norsica). Yes Tiw, thats very good, but the other one?... An increasingly coy Tiw turns his back on his father and holds up the existing hand again, hoping to confuse his wise elder. This one? he asks, hopefully. Now now Tiw his father says, adopting the stern but caring father voice a lot of us have groan to love and grown to hate, I mean the hand that used to be on the end of this arm. Oh says a now totally embarrassed Tiw, that one. Yes, Son; you may well be the god of law and social justice, here in Norsica, but you still have parents to answer to. Well Dad, I was out there at Kmart Plaza when I noticed this whopping great wolf that was about to eat absolutely everyone, and I thought to myself, thatd be a social injustice if ever there was one and I considered it my social, if not totally lawful, duty to intervene. I slapped that wolf like REALLY hard and said look here you; go away and the wolf went away, but I looked at the end of my arm and... well... You can see what had happened. Tiw being a god an all, Tiws father had to accept the story as, pardon the expression, gospel. There was no more said, and Tiw actually got away with the fact that he had changed the spelling of his name from the Norse Tyr, to the Old English Tiw; no mean feat, as Norsicans can be quite precious about their names. I believe Tiw also had mean feet. Like Sunday and the sun, Monday follows a path of simplicity, being named after the moon, although the story of how Moonday lost an O is fascinating. The Old English goddess Frigg is responsible for Friday. In Old Norsican, her name was Friggjar-dagr. It is not difficult to see the connection between friggjar and the modern term figjam, which expresses extreme self-confidence. Funny really. Figg apparently spent the majority of her time making clouds. Given that the name Friggjar comes from Norsica and, as previously mentioned, Norsicans can be precious about their names, it is relatively fundamental to see how Friggjar-dagr eventually morphed into what we now call Friday. With the possible exception of Tuesday, the day names mentioned so far, are quite straightforward in their spelling. Thors Day becomes Thursday Friggs Day becomes Friday Saturns Day becomes Saturday Sun Day becomes Sunday Moon Day becomes Monday Twis Day becomes Tuesday Now we get to Woden. For a start, there is a phenomenal conglomeration of misapprehensions around the actual name of Woden. Is it Woden or Wodan? The root of the problem is in the Anglo-Saxon origin of the name. Check out this list... Old English õden (the poor bastard didnt even get a capital in Old England!) Old High German Wôdan Old Saxon Uuôden Norsican Odin Proto-Germanic Wõdanaz or Wõdinaz Proto-Indo-European Wãt Welsh Gwynn ap Nudd In do-European Awe (meaning to blow) It goes on through Wods, Wop, Wut, Õor, Outdoor, Outboard Motor and Adrian, all of which, but for the last three, are based on at least a slender slither of fact! Wodan or (yet another bloody one) Wotan was the god of war or, it would not be unfair to say yet another bloody God of war. He probably started the first war ever, to get his name sorted out, and even then, in the day named after him, the eternal, proverbial they changed and jumbled letters and called it Wednesday, which only vaguely resembles any form of the name Woden, except for one that I deliberately didnt mention, so that my pointless ramblings might seem to have vague direction! Germans had the sense to change the name from Wodenstag to Mittwoch as far back as the tenth century! The spelling of Wednesday seems lacking in logic; particularly as our pronunciation, or the evoloution of our pronunciation of it sees us dropping the d and n sounds and calling it Wensday or Wenzday. Wednesday is a culturally confused day. It knows not from where it comes. It clings to its unclear past, like a leech to a leg; sucking away the very essence of the collective sanity of an unsuspecting species. Wednesday has no mother. Wednesday knows not to whom or what it may be maternally connected. Wednesday has no father. Wednesday knows not from whence its seed was planted, and has no paternal concept. Wednesday is a complete bastard. But its perceived lack of origin does not deter me. Its just the way it treats me that I find annoying. I wish it would just accept the past and move on. Apparently were stuck with it for as long as we breathe. I just held my breath for ten seconds, and its still here! Were stuck with it and it will be here long after we are. Let that be a warning to us all. Wednesday; more frightening than a giant wolf, because it just wont go away!
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 22:59:11 +0000
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