Thor‘s Day!

Happy Thursday!

Thursday comes straight from Old English, þunresdæg, and Middle English Thuresday. It‘s all about Thor, the Norse god of Thunder! Thunor, Donar, and Thor, they all come from the name of the Germanic god of thunder, Thunraz. It‘s like Jupiter in the interpretatio romana, dig?

The Romance languages, they took a different route. They went all in for Jupiter, the god of sky and thunder in Roman times. They called it Iovis Dies in Latin, “Jupiter's Day.” And in most Romance languages, Thursday became the day of Jupiter. Italian giovedì, Spanish jueves, French jeudi, you name it!

But here‘s where it gets wild. See, those Germanic languages, they got a thing for Thor. Torsdag in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Hósdagur/Tórsdagur in Faroese. Donnerstag in German. Donderdag in Dutch. They all bow down to Thor, man.

But hold on! Finnish and Northern Sami, they decided to borrow the whole “Torstai” and “Duorastat” deal. Non-Germanic, Uralic languages, they do things their way! And guess what? Even the extinct Polabian Slavic language had its version, perundan! They tipped their hat to Perun, the Slavic version of Thor.