Roots Bloody Roots
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: the hum of elodie's 'hummer' laptop
Topic: Language
I'm in Le Havre staying with Elodie. We were talking, and she said she was having trouble remembering how to spell 'Wednesday'. I had similar trouble not so long ago, and I fixed it by linking the spelling to the etymology of the word in my head. Wednesday = Wodnesdaeg, or "Woden's Day". Or "Odin's day", depending on the dialect. Since then, I don't screw it up. It would have been much easier if they'd simply explained that when we were in school instead of saying, "This is how it's spelled. Live with it!" Anyway, I took it upon myself to learn the rest of the days, and I found both the Latin and Germanic day-name roots! Bonus!

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In A.D. 321 Constantine the Great grafted the Hellenistic astrological system onto the Roman calendar, making the first day of the week a day of rest and worship and imposing the following sequence of names on the days: Diēs Sōlis, "Sun's Day"; Diēs Lūnae, "Moon's Day"; Diēs Martis, "Mars's Day"; Diēs Mercuriī, "Mercury's Day"; Diēs Jovis, "Jove's Day" or "Jupiter's Day"; Diēs Veneris, "Venus's Day"; and Diēs Saturnī, "Saturn's Day". This new Roman system was adopted with modifications throughout most of western Europe.

In the Germanic languages, such as Old English, the names of four of the Roman gods were converted into those of the corresponding Germanic gods. Therefore in Old English we have the following names (with their Modern English developments): Sunnandaeg, Sunday; Mōnandaeg, Monday; Tīwesdaeg, Tuesday (Tiu, like Mars, was a god of war); Wōdnesdaeg, Wednesday (Woden, like Mercury, was quick and eloquent); Thunresdaeg, Thursday (Thunor in Old English or Thor in Old Norse, like Jupiter, was lord of the sky; Old Norse Thōrsdagr influenced the English form); Frīgedaeg, Friday (Frigg, like Venus, was the goddess of love); and Saeternesdaeg, Saturday.
http://www.answers.com/topic/wednesday

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Lo loves the beauty of this choice for the names of our days, and feels it demonstrates the need to connect with the universe. I think it's interesting that we so much need to have meaning. We hate things to be meaningless, so to communicate something unvisersally, we choose things that have a connection to universal things, like the planets and stars.