onday

For other uses, see Monday (disambiguation).

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Galileo's 1616 drawings of the Moon and its phases. Monday is named after the Moon in many
languages.
Monday (
i
/mnde/ or /mndi/) is the day of the week between Sunday and Tuesday.
According to the traditional Christian, Islamic and Hebrew calendars, it is the second day of the
week, and according to international standard ISO 8601 it is the first day of the week. The name
of Monday is derived from Old English Mnandg and Middle English Monenday, which means
"moon day".
Contents

10 References
Etymology

A depiction of Mni, the personified moon, and his sister Sl, the personified sun, from Norse
mythology (1895) by Lorenz Frlich.
The English noun Monday derived sometime before 1200 from monedi, which itself developed
from Old English (around 1000) mnandg and mndg (literally meaning "moon's day"),
which is cognate to other Germanic languages, including Old Frisian mnadeig, Middle Low
German and Middle Dutch mnendag, mnendach (modern Dutch Maandag), Old High German
mnetag (modern German Montag), and Old Norse mnadagr (Swedish and Norwegian nynorsk
mndag, Icelandic mnudagur. Danish and Norwegian bokml mandag). The Germanic term is a
Germanic interpretation of Latin lunae dies ("day of the moon").
[1]

In many Slavic languages the name of the day eschews pagan tradition and translates as "after
Sunday/holiday". Russian (ponyedyelnik), Serbian (ponedeljak),
Ukrainian (ponedilok), Bulgarian (ponedelnik), Polish poniedziaek,
Czech pondl, Slovak pondelok, Slovenian ponedeljek. In Turkish it is called pazartesi, which
also means "after Sunday." Japanese and Korean share the same ancient Chinese words ''
(Hiragana:, Hangul:) for Monday which means day of the moon.
In many Languages of India, the word for Monday is derived from Sanskrit Somavra.
[2]
Soma is
another name of the Moon god in Hinduism. In some languages of India it is also called
Chandravra, Chandra in Sanskrit means moon. In Thailand the day is called "Wan Jan"
meaning, the day of the Moon god Chandra".
Position in the week
The international ISO 8601 standard places Monday as the first day of the week, and this is
widely used on calendars in Europe and in international business. Monday is xngqy ()
in Chinese, meaning "day one of the week". Its name in Georgian and Syriac means "first day".
In all Slavic languages Monday's perceived as the first day of the week.
[3]
Modern western
culture usually looks at Monday as the beginning of the workweek, as it is typically Monday
when adults go back to work and children go back to school after the weekend.
Jewish and some Christian traditions place Sunday as the first day of the week, and Monday is
thus the second day of the week. This is the standard format in the United States, Canada, Japan
and Israel. Quakers traditionally refer to Monday as "Second Day" eschewing the pagan origin of
the English name "Monday". For similar reasons the official liturgical calendar of the Roman
Catholic Church refers to Monday as the second celebration day Feria II. The Portuguese and
the Greek (Eastern Orthodox Church) name for Monday reflects this, as do all the days' names
except Saturday and Sunday: the Portuguese word for Monday is segunda-feira and the Greek
word is "devtra" (second in order). Likewise the Hebrew name for Monday is yom-
sheni ( ).
Religious observances
In Judaism and Islam Mondays are considered auspicious days for fasting. The Didache warned
early Christians not to fast on Mondays to avoid Judaizing, and suggests Wednesdays instead.
In Judaism the Torah is read in public on Monday mornings, one of three days the Torah is read
each week (the other two days being Thursday and Saturday). Special penitential prayers are
recited on Monday, unless there is a special occasion for happiness which cancels them.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church Mondays are days on which the Angels are commemorated. The
Octoechos contains hymns on this theme, arranged in an eight-week cycle, that are chanted on
Mondays throughout the year. At the end of Divine Services on Monday, the dismissal begins
with the words: "May Christ our True God, through the intercessions of his most-pure Mother, of
the honorable, Bodiless Powers (i.e., the angels) of Heaven". In many Eastern monasteries
Mondays