I ma not sure when Germanic folk first picked up the habit of naming
the days of the 7-day week as they do, nor for that matter whether
there were 7 days or not in earlier editions of the Germanic week,
but the custom is generally considered to be quite old. In view of
this, some early norse versions could prove interesting to some of
you. The asteriks mean that the forms can be reconstructed, but are
not actually found written or heard spoken as such. These following
are all standard for Proto-Norse (here shown from +/- 300-400AD), an
era during which the language is thought to have been quite stable
and conservative. The Old Norse forms are also shown for comparison
and a few issues pointed out.
The first 4 are considered unproblematic, except for the dating of
the generalization of -an over -�n for all masculine n-stems, which
effects only *man�n dagaz. *�unras dagaz could also be *�onras dagaz
- it depends on whether the a-mutation of u (making it o) occurred
before or after loss of the nasal (n). Old English has �unres d�g,
for comparison, and Old English almost always matches Old Norse when
it comes to a-mutation, whereas other Germanic languages differ very
widely in this respect. I chose friggjardagr over frj�dagr because I
think it is more original. Faroese has friggjardagr, which is quite
specific, whereas frj�dagr is more generic (and problematic). The
last one, *laug�z dagaz, could be specific to Old Norse, which also
has laugar-aptann, laugar-kveld, and laugar-n�tt, showing that the
use is probably quite old. I thought some of you might enjoy seeing
something on this topic.