Interpretatio germanica is the practice by the
Germanic peoples of identifying Roman gods with the names of
Germanic deities. According to
Rudolf Simek, this occurred around the 1st century AD, when both cultures came into closer contact.
Names of week days
Some evidence for ''interpretatio germanica'' exists in the Germanic translations of the Roman
names for the days of the week from Roman deities into names of approximately equivalent Germanic deities:
*
Sunday
Sunday is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. In most Western countries, Sunday is a day of rest and a part of the weekend. It is often considered the first day of the week.
For most observant adherents of Christianity, Sunday ...
, the day of
Sunnǭ ( on, Sunna, ''Sól''; ang, Sunne; goh, Sunna), the sun (as female), was earlier the day of
Sol
Sol or SOL may refer to:
Astronomy
* The Sun
Currency
* SOL Project, a currency project in France
* French sol, or sou
* Argentine sol
* Bolivian sol, the currency of Bolivia from 1827 to 1864
* Peruvian sol, introduced in 1991
* Peruvian sol ( ...
, the sun (as male)
*
Monday, the day of
Mēnô (Máni; Mōna; Māno), the moon (as male), was earlier the day of
Luna, the moon (as female)
*
Tuesday, the day of
Tīwaz (Týr; Tīw; Ziu), was earlier the day of
Mars, god of war
*
Wednesday, the day of
Wōdanaz (Odin, Óðinn; Wōden; Wuotan), was earlier the day of
Mercury
Mercury commonly refers to:
* Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun
* Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg
* Mercury (mythology), a Roman god
Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to:
Companies
* Merc ...
, god of travelers and eloquence
*
Thursday, the day of
Þūraz/Þunraz (Thor, Þórr; Þunor; Donar), The name is derived from
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
''þunresdæg'' and
Middle English ''Thuresday'' (with loss of -n-, first in northern dialects, from influence of
Old Norse ''Þórsdagr'') meaning "Thor's Day". It was named after the Norse god of Thunder,
Thor. It was earlier the day of
Jupiter, god of thunder; the
hammer-wielding Þunraz may elsewhere appear identified with the club-wielding
Hercules
*
Friday, the day of
Frijjō (
Frigg; Frīg; Frīja), was earlier the day of
Venus, goddess of love
In most of the
Romance languages, which derive from Latin, days of the week still preserve the names of the original Roman deities, such as the Italian for Tuesday, ''martedì'' (from the Latin ''Martis dies'').
The exception to the use of Germanic gods is Saturday, which retains the name of the foreign god, possibly because there was no obvious Germanic substitute.
The name of the day after Saturn occurs in many
West Germanic languages; such as the English "Saturday", the
West Frisian ''
Saterdei'', the
Low German
:
:
:
:
:
(70,000)
(30,000)
(8,000)
, familycolor = Indo-European
, fam2 = Germanic
, fam3 = West Germanic
, fam4 = North Sea Germanic
, ancestor = Old Saxon
, ancestor2 = Middle L ...
''
Saterdag'', and the
Dutch ''
zaterdag'' all meaning
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
's day.
Dissenting view
Simek emphasizes the paucity of evidence for a widespread ''interpretatio germanica'', as opposed to the well-attested opposite ''
interpretatio romana'', and notes that comparison with Roman gods is insufficient to reconstruct ancient Germanic gods, or equate them definitively with those of later
Norse mythology
Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern period ...
.
See also
* ''
Interpretatio graeca''
* ''
Interpretatio romana''
References
{{reflist, 22em
Germanic mythology
Religious interpretation