Naming the days of the week

How are Days of the week named?

Continuing with the last post of why there are 7 days in a week, here I will try to elucidate the idea behind the naming and the order of the days in a week. This was the method used in the olden times (Babylonian civilization) to arrive at the names for the days and their order.

The so called "planets" i.e. only those observable through naked eyes together with Sun & Moon; are arranged in ascending order of their speed as observed from earth. i.e. from the slowest to the fastest moving "planets". Now each of these "planets" were assigned to every one hour of a day in that order repeatedly starting from Saturn and continued across days without a break. Whenever an planet falls on the Zeroth hour of a given day then that particular day was named after that planet. Now since the "planets" number in seven, this repeats after every seven days - now termed a 'week'.

In other words, over the 24 hours of a day the 7 "planets" are to be assigned.. so the zeroth hour of the next day is the 25th hour in sequence. i.e. 25 mod 7 = 4. Basically, once the "planets" are arranged in order as described above, every fourth "planet" starting from Saturn will form the days of the week.

Day - Planet (Indian name)

Saturday - Saturn (Shani);

Sunday - Sun (Ravi);

Monday - Moon (Soma);

Tuesday - Mars (Mangala);

Wednesday - Mercury (Bhuda);

Thrusday - Jupiter (Guru);

Friday - Venus (Shukra);

There you see, it is clear that concept of week has no astronomical or scientific significance unlike the concept of day, month (lunar revolution period), and year.

Now that you know the idea behind the naming of the days in a week and the concept of week, would you still attach (religious or otherwise) importance to any particular day of a week? Do leave your comments

Courtesy: "Astrology believe it or not" by Dr.S.Balachandra Rao, Gandhi Center of Science and Human Values, Bangalore.