who/when was the day of the week that we are in decided?
In: Culture
In the time of Julius Caesar the first version of the modern western calendar was put into use throughout Rome. There was a subtle flaw, however, in that the number of leap years was wrong. Much later in the time of Pope Gregory this was largely fixed. So much time had passed that correcting the calendar at that time resulted in a sudden shift but throughout the Catholic world it was done. Eventually all of Europe, European colonies, and those who traded with Europe ended up using the Gregorian calendar. Today the calendar is maintained to extreme precision by an international standards body.
Other calendars do remain in use around the world. For instance many financial institutions use a more regularized calendar, Judaism and Islam have lunar calendars with particular start dates, and Japan maintains its imperial calendar.
We do not really know as there is very little written about this. What we do know is that the Ancient Greek and Romans used an eight day week which were also divisible by their calendar. So they could use the same calendar every year which made planning of festivals and other events easier. The calendar also followed the lunar cycle. We start finding references to the modern seven day week a few decades before year one. The days were named after the seven known planets at the time who were again named after gods. This is still largely true today. The seven day week became more and more popular over the eight day week. Especially as the calendar were reformed and two extra months were added to complete the year meaning the eight day week did not fit the new calendar. If there ever was a book discussing the change from the eight day week to the seven day week or the reasoning behind the naming of the days after the planets it have been lost to history.
The Moon. It has revolution of 28 days around the Earth, and has 4 distinct phases. That breaks down to a 7 day week. The names of the week come from superstitions and mythologies. And they stuck because they needed to be named something.
The current Gregorian calendar was standardized by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582. It was a revision of the prior Julian calendar from 46BC. The day names are language specific, and have their own interesting etymology in whatever language you are interested in.
Latest Answers