Finding Cultural References in the Terms for Weekdays

[Kristen Harrison]

I've always been interested in etymology and I like looking up the roots of words to see the patterns between them. In particular I've noticed that traditions and perspectives of different cultures can be seen in how they mark time, in the meanings behind the words for days of the week and months. When I first looked at the Turkish terms for the days of the week, I immediately noticed a parallel connection between the words for Sunday and Monday (pazar and pazartesi) and between Friday and Saturday (cuma and cumartesi). So I did a little preliminary research through Wikipedia and it turns out to have religious and cultural significance, as well as track the influences of other languages on Turkish, especially Persian (I assume Persian and Farsi are the same?).

Footnotes indicated that pazar was in reference to a bazaar, which would have been the weekly marketplace, pivotal to a society's local identity and tradition. Notable bazaars tend to exist mostly in the Middle East, and it seems to me from what I have seen and heard that the Mediterranean / Middle Eastern cultures seem to revolve much more around open-air markets and sometimes street vendors, in contrast to the Western-style corporate giant retailer stores. In any case, pazar seems to have gotten its name as the day of a traditional weekly market.

Cuma was in reference to  a congregation or gathering, which is intuitive considering that Friday is a holy day of Islam and that Turkey is a Muslim country. In fact, the arabic term for Friday is yaum al-jum'ah --- literally something close to Day of the Congregation, since Islam is a very community-oriented religion with collective worship. The -esi or -tesi endings on pazartesi and cumartesi indicated "The day after ----"  so, the day after market day or the day after the holy day.

It was also interesting to see how other languages had impacted the terms for weekdays. Wednesdays and Thursdays marked a great similarity between Turkish and Persian:  Compare Çarşamba and Perşembe with (in phonetics) chaharshanbeh and panjshanbeh, which seemed to describe them as Day 4 and Day 5. Tuesday (salı) was oddly close to the much farther-East Indonesian and Javanese "Selasa" and "Slasa". Granted, the Indonesian area has its fair share of Muslim influence since the Arab conquest reached that far East, but then why would those languages be closer to Turkish than Arabic? The Qu'ran is written in Arabic. Hmm. Anyway, from my observations, European languages tend to name their days of the week after planets and cosmic bodies, while the Middle Eastern langauges tend to number them, or make a reference to a religious day or community bazaar tradition.