2995: Why No Germanic Saturday? Mr 4, 2025

When it came to naming the days of the week each culture replaced the names of the week with their own deities for the days of the week (each being associated with a planet) that roughly corresponded with its own from the Babylonians to the Greeks, Romans and then Germanic peoples, but Germanic cultures have no equivalent of the Roman Saturn, and hence Saturday remained. This, inherited from Latin, became part of Proto-Germanic and hence in theory all modern Germanic languages, but that also isn’t the case. There isn’t a Germanic pantheonic name for Saturday, but at least three alternates have existed.

Old Norse: laugardagr, literally "washing-day". 

Modern German Sonnabend, literally "Sunday Eve".

More Common Modern German word Samstag which comes from ‘Sabbath Day’ from the Hebrew (Shabbat)’. The [m] instead of [b] from Hebrew to European languages is also found in the name James from Yaakov, first in Latin as ‘Iacobus’ to then ‘Iacomus’ before ‘James’. Here too the words was Shabbat, then Sabat, then Sam(a)t.