April 9, 2002

Arthur?! Let's Not Forget This...
Dan

As many people know, when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded Britain, they brought with them their German Mythology. Historical German polytheism was much like Roman or Greek, just with a darker twist, IMHO. We can actually still see the influence of this mythology in our language today. Ever wonder where the name for Wednesday came? Well here's your mythological history lesson for today :).

Wotan/Odin was the chief god for the Germanic tribes. The names varied based on different dialects, but pre-christianity, he was the man. When the German Invaders came to Britain they brought him along too, now referred as Wodin. Well, since days needed names, they figured they would honor Wodin with one. Wednesday is derived as such:

1. Wodin is the original name.

2. The inflective language of Old English shows us that when one posseses something, you ad an -es to the end of the word. In this case, Wodines.

3. A linguistic phenomenon in Old English called front-mutation changed the Wodines to Wednes.

4. For a while the words were separate (ie: Wednes Daeg), but were later truncated and became the word we know today, Wednesday.

What's the point of all this? Well, we wouldn't have a name for 4th day of the week, and would probably call it something like Middleweek, like the German's Mittwoch. Therein lies your proof of mythology, whether or Arthur is justifiable or not. And by saying that he was creating "a new English mythology" does not in any way insinuate that there wasn't a previous one.