I mean, if today i.e. is Sunday then someone long time ago should have said “Today will be Sunday” for the first time in a period from today that is multiple of seven. I was assuming that it was Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582, but looks like he is not. I failed in googling and duckduckgoing out the answer, so I ask for Lemmy’s collective wisdom!

EDIT: so question is not about the origin of 7-day week and sequence of weekday names, but about the exact reference point (day) of today’s weekday countdown. From when have people stopped adding or ommiting any adjustment ‘out-of-week’ days (like in Babylon or Rome) and kept counting to seven till today? In other words, there should be a point exactly N x 7 days ago from which the 7-day countdown has not been interrupted. Or at least the earliest known day in history that everyone on Earth agreed upon as a reference point

EDIT 2: Solved by https://lemmy.world/comment/1852458 Thanks everyone!

  • TeddE@lemmy.worldEnglish
    36·
    1 year ago

    From weeks in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week

    The modern seven-day week can be traced back to the Babylonians, who used it within their calendar. Other ancient cultures had different week lengths, including ten in Egypt and an eight-day week for Etruscans.

    There’s probably a rabbit hole to go down to get into the mindset of who decided that a seven day week was a better system then what the neighbors are using. Babylonian astronomy and mathematics at the time likely played a role.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonia

    And overall there’s a rich history to how we divide up the years in calendar reform.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_reform

    Personally, I’ve fallen in love with the international fixed calendar. It proposes getting rid of the 30 days hath November nonsense and making all months 28 days. Take all the month-ends and combine them into a new month Sol, and since 28 × 13 is 364, create a new holiday called world day that is part of no week, no month, just doin’ it’s own thing. Add on a monthless leap day when needed and like magic, months are now a functional unit of measurement. 1 month = 28 days.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar

    • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.ukEnglish
      23·
      1 year ago

      On the link for the wikipaedia "week"page, lower down, under “Christian Europe”, it mentions: “The seven-day weekly cycle has remained unbroken in Christendom, and hence in Western history, for almost two millennia, despite changes to the Coptic, Julian, and Gregorian calendars, demonstrated by the date of Easter Sunday having been traced back through numerous computistic tables to an Ethiopic copy of an early Alexandrian table beginning with the Easter of 311 CE.”

      So I guess, Easter Sunday in 311CE, someone called a big meeting and said something equivalent to “Right lads? All agreed? Today is Sunday, everywhere. Got that? Go and tell everyone you know. We’re synchronising everyone’s calendars.”

    • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@slrpnk.net
      4·
      1 year ago

      I also love this calendar. It’s important to remember that “what day of the week is it” is an important question for at least two world religions, though, so months won’t always start on the same day of the week from year to year — but every month in a given year will.

  • psycotica0@lemmy.ca
    24·
    1 year ago

    Ok, let me rephrase your rephrase to be what question I think you’re trying to ask.

    At some point we had decided on a seven day week with week names. That’s fine. But we must also have decided at some point that today was Wednesday in this system.

    So I think you’re asking “what is the first day we all agree was definitely a Sunday, such that all Sundays after were based on that”. Or put another way, at what point did the days of the week get locked to the days of our year.

    I don’t have that answer, but your question confused me, so I’ve reworded it.

    • wAkawAka@lemmy.worldOP
      61·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, thanks, that’s pretty much it! Except we cannot really make days of the week get locked to the days of our year because 365 is not divisible by 7, and we’re adding 1 day to February every 4th year on top of that.

      • jerkjaguar@lemmy.world
        91·
        1 year ago

        Your phrasing on this post was confusing af. The other poster clarified it and then you just made it confusing af again with this response. Thanks

      • Valmond@lemmy.ml
        2·
        1 year ago

        And every 400 year we don’t add the extra day, except every 2000 year when we do it anyway.

        • Jadey ()@feddit.nl
          1·
          1 year ago

          the numbers for this are skip every 100 years except every 400 years but yeah it’s kinda wack

  • Coolishguy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    1 year ago

    Our idea of a week can probably be traced back directly to early Israelite religion. There’s good evidence of a 7-day cycle by the 6th century BCE, maybe as early as the 9th. They cared which day was which because the 7th day was a holy day of rest (still practiced as Shabbat), matching up with the supposed final day of creation. Jews have been keeping this practice for a very long time, so I would guess that we’re still aligned with the days the ancient Israelites were following that they thought matched up with the days of creation. Unfortunately, the exact nature of what day they decided was which is lost to time.

  • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    1 year ago

    I believe most weekday names as we know them in English and many other northern European languages derive from the vikings.

    • Monday, not sure?
    • Tuesday = Tir’s day, Tir/Thyra being a woman in the Nordic mythology.
    • Wednesday = Wotan’s day, also “onsdag” in Nordic languages, Wotan=Odin.
    • Thursday = Thor’s day, also “torsdag” in Nordic languages.
    • Friday = “fredag”, from Frey/Freia in the Nordic mythology.
    • Saturday = lørdag, not sure.
    • Sunday = literally the day of the sun.
  • quinnly@lemmy.ml
    4·
    1 year ago

    I can’t see any evidence that it wasn’t Pope Gregory on Oct 15 1582. Which was a Friday, I guess? The previous day, October 4th was a Monday and a Thursday but the Gregorian calendar standardized it.

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    From what I could quickly find online it says the 7 day week started with the Babylonians waaaay back circa 2100 BCE. The days had different names then, but that seems to be when it started at least.