Same planets! Same days!

[lauradi7dw]

A week ago I asked a question about the Korean words for the moon and for a month, which I am convinced must be cognate in some way. The teacher expanded it and gave us the words for all the planets.
I already knew the days of the week and noticed a link between the planet name words and names of days of the week. I started to be like one of the many gifs of people saying "wait a minute" or having numerical formulae swirling overhead.
I restrained myself from jumping up and down. I let it digest for a few days. Then I made a chart. I can't figure out how to put a Libre Office table into this post, so I have taken a not very good photo of the screen




The Korean and Romance language words for Tuesday - Friday are based on the planets (in the same order) Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and the English and Korean words for Saturday are clearly from Saturn. Can this be a coincidence? The Roman empire expanded to a lot of places, but I don't think Korea was one of them. I don't know much about the history of the Korean language. I was trying to find how far back words like the names of the planets (or days of the week) might go. I pointed out to the teacher that if I dropped her into London (as was) 1000 years ago she probably couldn't understand anything people said to her (she knows some Japanese but not German). I asked if she were dropped into Korea of that time period whether she'd understand what people said. She thought so, mostly.

If you are looking at the Korean words above and they just look unintelligible, I will break down one pair with the words for planet and day (which are built in) removed, ie a root of sorts.
Wednesday, for example
Mercury is 수성 take off the part that means planet and you get 수
Wednesday is 수요일 take off the part that means day, you get 수

I didn't go into the OE words for planets to see if they correspond to the Norse-ish days. Many languages (not English or Korean) have the Jewish or Christian religious influence for weekend days, so I am omitting them from my grand unified theory. Which isn't so unified, because lots of languages mostly call the days by a number.

Comments

[sovay]

The Roman empire expanded to a lot of places, but I don't think Korea was one of them.

The route doesn't need to have been Rome to Korea: the Roman solar-lunar-planetary system of which we inherit a partly Germanized version was itself an import from the Hellenistic world; the original Roman week was an inclusively counted eight-day cycle shared with the Etruscan calendar. There just needs to have been enough contact with the ancient Mediterranean and the ancient Asian worlds for the week to transfer over.

I didn't go into the OE words for planets to see if they correspond to the Norse-ish days.

It wasn't done by planets but by gods. The sole exception was Saturday: since there was no direct local equivalent for Saturn, he was just calqued in. I wrote a poem about it once.

the Jewish or Christian religious influence for weekend days

The Hebrew calendar doesn't have names for the days except for Shabbes. It's just first/second/third etc.

[lauradi7dw]

So much to learn based on this reply. Nearly the only time I think about Etruscans is when I see some of their art, which is not too often. I'm not surprised that they had a calendar, but had no clue.

I put the OE/Norse words on my table. I didn't know until I was looking up the various spellings that Frigg corresponded to Venus.

In Spanish, one goes down the week with the obvious Roman god words until suddenly hit with sabado. I think that is pretty close to Sabbath. I doubt that that Spanish word is borrowed from the Russian (and Ukrainian, and maybe other Slavic languages) word which is subota (spelled differently in Ukrainian and Russian, sounds the same to me). The word for Sunday in Russian means Sunday but also can mean resurrection, which I think is about as clear a religious influence as one can get. Some of the other days of the week in Russian and Ukrainian are just number-related, as is true in lots of languages. One of my classmates was surprised at the Korean day names - as a speaker of Mandarin, he had expected number-day names.

I will be pondering on calque for a while.

[sovay]

Nearly the only time I think about Etruscans is when I see some of their art, which is not too often. I'm not surprised that they had a calendar, but had no clue.

I have never formally studied their art/culture/what we understand of their language. I have just been interested for more than a quarter-century. There are two sarcophagi in the MFA that used to be on regular display in the classical wing: I would visit them. One of their concepts of time measured in historical memory is very useful to me.

I put the OE/Norse words on my table. I didn't know until I was looking up the various spellings that Frigg corresponded to Venus.

The Roman-to-German week is not a one-for-one because nothing ever is, not even the Greek and Roman pantheons that are so often treated as interchangeable, but it was the closest equation because people like familiar shapes. Odin for Mercury is the one that's always been most interesting to me because I assume the common ground was trickster.

In Spanish, one goes down the week with the obvious Roman god words until suddenly hit with sabado. I think that is pretty close to Sabbath.

Agreed. And domingo is simply the Lord's day.

Some of the other days of the week in Russian and Ukrainian are just number-related, as is true in lots of languages. One of my classmates was surprised at the Korean day names - as a speaker of Mandarin, he had expected number-day names.

I didn't know that. Thank you for telling me.

poem

[lauradi7dw]

Thanks for the link. I am thinking of printing it out so I will remember to look at it repeatedly.

Re: poem

[sovay]

Thanks for the link. I am thinking of printing it out so I will remember to look at it repeatedly.

Thank you so much. That is an amazing thing to hear.