"Day of the Week" Name

"Monday's child is fair of face
Tuesday's child is full of grace
Wednesday's child is full of woe
Thursday's child has far to go
Friday's child is loving and giving
Saturday's child works hard for a living
And the child that's born on the Sabbath day
Is fair and wise and good and gay"

— Traditional Nursery Rhyme

In many traditions a handy shortcut to giving a child a Meaningful Name has been to name that child after one of the days of the week.

This is useful because each weekday has an array of meanings. Many European languages derive their names from the Roman practice of naming them after the Roman gods, either by adopting the Roman names or by replacing them with similar local gods (e.g. Germanic gods). From the original Latin, we have Monday as "Dies Lunae", Moon's day, Tuesday is "Dies Martis", Mars' day, Wednesday is "Dies Mercurii", Mercury's day, Thursday is "Dies Iovis", Jupiter's day, Friday is "Dies Veneris", Venus' day, Saturday is "Dies Saturni", Saturn's day, and Sunday, "Dies Solis", which is... Sun day.

This is easier to remember in Latinate languages. The days of the week in French, for example, are lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi and dimanche. In Spanish, those days are lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado and domingo. An exception but still easy is Portuguese, where considering domingo is the first day, the five following it before sabado are [ordinal number]-feira starting with second (Segunda, Terça^note Though that's "third" as in fraction, in ordinal it would be "terceira", Quarta, Quinta, Sexta).

From the Germanic languages, we have Sunday as The Sun's day (Sunna), Monday as Moon day (Máni), Tuesday as Týr's day, Wednesday as Wotan's/Óðin's day, Thursday as Þór's day, and Friday as Freyja's day; in English, Saturday is unique in having a Latin-derived name, elsewhere it is bathing or pool day (Laugardagr). Hooray!

This pagan-based naming has ticked off the Catholic Church, so some countries with lots of Catholic influence will have names based on what prayers should be done. Or even more uninventive: long ago in Iceland, a Catholic bishop renamed Tuesday to "third day", Wednesday to "middle week day", Thursday to "fifth day" and Friday to "fasting day." The Quakers also used numbers for days of the week instead of honoring Pagan deities (Sunday was the first day, etc), and in Hebrew they've always been numbers ("Sabbath" comes from the Hebrew word for seven).

Naming a character in this way is a good way to connect them to some of these previously described figures or imply they are similar to the day's feel (See Seinfeld). Someone named Monday can't be fun, because Garfield hates Mondays, right? On the other hand, Saturday must be super fun to hang out with—and, ladies, he's single.

Another way is getting away with naming a character after a month. This is not as meaningful because some people actually do name their kids after months (April, May, June), and, not only that, we still use two month names originated by Roman emperors with considerably large egos (July and August, for Julius and Augustus).

See also Temporal Theme Naming, "Days of the Week" Song.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Friday Monday from Madlax. Given that he is the creepy, irredeemably evil, Malevolent Masked Man Big Bad, his normal name serves as quite the contrast.
• In the Alabasta arc of One Piece, the Baroque Works organization gives days of the week as Code Names to its high-ranking female agents. (The very top female agents above them get codenamed after specific holidays, while the vice-president gets the codename "Miss All Sunday", which is supposed to represent all the Sundays of the year.) Like many other names in One Piece, there doesn't seem to be any significance besides sounding cool.
• In Digimon Fusion, the epithets of the Death Generals each start with a kanji that corresponds to a day of the week. The first four appear out of chronological sequence (fire, moon, wood, water), but the last three are in order (gold, earth, sun).
• In Kuroko's Basketball, each of the main members of the Seirin High Basketball Club (except for Kuroko), have a kanji corresponding to a day of the week in their name. In order starting from Sunday: Hyuuga(日), Izuki(月), Kagami(火), Mitobe(水), Kiyoshi(木), Koganei(金), and Tsuchida(土).
• The Italian adaptation of Yattodetaman, called Calendar Men, had a field day with this. Since the series' main theme is time travel, they decided to give everyone names related to days of the week, months and so on. For example, Mirenjo became Lunedì (Monday) and her little brother Komaro became Sabato (Saturday); her two lackeys were renamed Settembre and Ottobre, full names Primo Settembre and Due Ottobre ("September the First" and "October the Second"), the hero's wimpy alter ego Wataru Toki became Beppe Domani (something like "Joe Tomorrow")...
• In the Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics Snow White episodes the Dwarfs are named after the days of the week.
• Tuesday Simmons is one of the titular characters of Carole & Tuesday.

Animation

• Upin & Ipin: Tok Dalang's real name is "Senin bin Kamis", which literally means "Monday, son of Thursday".

Comic Books

• The main character of Rogue Trooper reboot is named Friday.
• One of Alan Moore's one-shot strips for 2000 AD titled "Chronocops" which was modeled as a parody of Dragnet with Time Travel, saw a main character named Joe Saturday with a partner Ed Thursday. A detective from the Fraud Division is named Marv Wednesday, and Ed's grandmother has the name Tuesday.
• Legion of Super-Heroes member Mon-El (real name Lar Gand) was named that way because Superboy mistook him for his older brother (Lar had amnesia at the time) and they met on a Monday. (-El being Superboy's family surname.)
• Sort of applies to DC Comics villain Solomon Grundy, who was (re)born on a Monday (and thus named after the famous nursery rhyme.)
• Superman had a voodoo themed villain named Baron Sunday, presumably after the loa Baron Samedi, also known as Baron Saturday.
• There is Thursday and Friday (from Robinson Crusoe's character, Friday) from the Mickey Mouse Comic Universe.
• In Ms. Tree, Michael Tree's maiden name was Friday; her father may or may not be Sgt. Joe
• Anno Dracula: Seven Days in Mayhem has Kate Reed joining a version of the Council of Seven Days as Wednesday.
• Iron Man has an artificial intelligence called F.R.I.D.A.Y (Female Replacement Intelligent Digital Assistant Youth) who also serves as a Girl Friday.

Fan Fic

• The Akutare brothers in Pretty Cure Perfume Preppy, Getsuyo, Kayo and Suiyo, are named after the Japanese words for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (Getsuyoubi, Kayoubi and Suiyoubi).

Film

• His Girl Friday popularized the nickname "Girl Friday" for secretaries, based on Robinson Crusoe (see below).
• The TV film Snow White: The Fairest of Them All has this for the Seven Dwarfs' names and uses the Nursery Rhyme (see Page quote above) to introduce them.
• The preacher in There Will Be Blood is named Eli Sunday.
• The seven sisters in ''What Happened to Monday" are named for the days of the week. Because of the plot's one child rule, each girl is only allowed to go out on "her" day.

Literature

• In 1066 and All That, before the conversion of England, the Saxons worshiped gods named Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
• In the teen novel Adorable Sunday, the protagonist explains that when she was born, her mother got the idea in her head that she should be called Sunday, on the grounds that she would grow up to be "somebody." (The plot focused on her brief career in modeling.)
  Sunday's dad: Besides, she was born today, and today is Thursday.
  Sunday's mom: I don't care. Sunday is a special day, and this is a special child. I can't help when she was born.
• Mr. Wednesday from American Gods. The name is actually foreshadowing that he is actually Odin (Odin>Woden>Weden's-day). In other words, it's an Inverted Trope: The day is named after him. He even acknowledges it when he first gives his name as Wednesday, claiming that "Today is my day." though he notes that because of the stormy weather, "it might as well be Thursday" (Thor>Thur's-day) This almost spoils his identity for anyone who already knows the origin of the days' names.
• Sharon Creech's Bloomability stars a protagonist named Domenica Santolina Doone, or "Dinnie" for short. "Domenica" is Italian for "Sunday," her mother naming her such because she was born on a Sunday and that made her blessed. She certainly gets a lot of opportunities.
• In Blue Avenger Cracks the Code, one of Blue's childhood friends is named Tuesday.
• One kids' book, entitled A Chicken Called Saturday, a chicken has seven chicks and names them all after the days of the week (Sunday hatched first and Saturday last).
• In Enchanted, all six girls are named for the day of the week they were born on, and fit the rhyme "Monday's Child"
• Wednesday Shadowmist, the heroine of Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross.
• Guy Montag in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (his surname is German for Monday).
• The eponymous heroine of Friday by Robert A. Heinlein.
• The children's picture book Heckedy-Peg by Audrey and Don Wood features seven children named after the days of the week (the oldest is Monday, the youngest is little Sunday). Also notable for gorgeous illustrations and a dose of terrifying (the wicked witch turns the children into food and will eat them unless their mother can guess which food is which child).
• The trustees in Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series are Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, Drowned Wednesday, Sir Thursday, Lady Friday, Superior Saturday, and Lord Sunday. This was actually the very first thing that Garth Nix thought of, leading into everything else. The names just kind of fell into his head.
• The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton, though there the days of the week are just the code names for the seven leaders of a secret anarchist society and not their actual names. Rather than gods or nursery rhymes, the names are symbolic of the (slightly adjusted) Creation Week, with the most mysterious bordering on God-like of the bunch naturally being Sunday.
• The protagonists of the children's book A New Day by Brad Meltzer are colorful personifications of the days of the week. One of them, Sunday, quits being a day, forcing the other days to seek a replacement for her.
• A short story in the Hellboy book Oddest Jobs discusses this. Hellboy, Liz, and another B.P.R.D. worker try to think of someone named Thursday, and Hellboy ends up telling a story of a man with the last name Thursday. The man comes from a race of Thursday Men, who are trying to prevent the sinister and destructive Wednesday Men from coming through to our dimension.
• The hamlet folk in the book of Lark Rise to Candleford nicknamed their farmer, Morris, "Old Monday". This got transferred to the TV series without the man's real name being mentioned.
• In Pitcairn's Island, the third book of The Bounty Trilogy, Fletcher Christian's first child on the island is born on a Thursday in October, so Christian and his wife name the boy Thursday October Christian. This also happened in real life.
• Sheri S. Tepper's Raising The Stones has siblings named after days of the week, but they don't know what the words meant - their parents took them from an old list in an obsolete language, and thought they'd make good names.
• Robinson Crusoe's native friend, Friday. Guess what day of the week they met? (Hint: It was Friday) And any parody thereof.
• The Thursday Next books, of course. The eponymous heroine aside, her mother is Wednesday Next, her son is Friday Next, and her daughter is Tuesday Next. The one who doesn't fit is her daughter Jenny. This foreshadows the fact that Jenny doesn't exist—she's a mindworm (an imaginary, persistent idea) implanted in Thursday that later spreads to the rest of the family, making her a Double Subversion.
• In The Time Traveler's Wife, Gomez mentions that he and Charisse were going to name their daughter Wednesday, but change their mind.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events has a few characters named after weekdays. The final book had Friday Caliban, with it being implied that an earlier character's name was Monday (and her father) and an unseen woman named Thursday.
• The young adult novel The Snowbird features a character named July, who explains that he had so many older brothers and sisters that his mother was completely out of ideas as to what to name him, so his father told her to just name him after the month in which he was born. Humorously, he adds, "Good thing I wasn't born in April."
• Brian Doyle's novel Spud Sweetgrass has a character named Mr. Friday, who, appropriately enough, runs a chain of chipwagons.
• Mr. Monday from Stardust, whose name ends up playing a role in the No Man of Woman Born ending.
• Welkin Weasels: Gaslight Geezers shows Spindrick Sylver's anarchist group naming themselves after days of the week, which leads to an entertaining Who's on First? routine when he tries to ask "Saturday" for help and everyone assumes he's making an appointment for the next meeting.
• From the Discworld novel Witches Abroad, Mr./Baron Saturday, which like many Pratchett jokes works on multiple levels once you get the whole context.

Live-Action TV

• Wednesday Friday Addams, of The Addams Family, had the week's scariest name as her own.
• There was a Square One TV sketch that was a parody of The Addams Family, called The Adding Family. In it, the two (unseen) children were hit with a terrible (from their perspective... and maybe a little bit of ours, too) curse. One was Pugster; the other was Thursday.
• Doctor Who
  • The episode "Empress of Mars" featured an Ice Warrior named Friday. He was named by a Victorian Colonel after the Robinson Crusoe character.
  • Ruby Sunday is the companion of the Fifteenth Doctor.
• In the new epic of our times, That '80s Show, a punk rocker was named June Tuesday.
• Dragnet had Joe Friday.
  • Parodied in the 1987 movie when his grandmother showed up. His maternal grandmother, Granny Monday.
  • Mathnet had Kate Monday and Pat Tuesday.
• The Monster of the Week in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Freshman" is a vampire sorority girl named Sunday.
• In Mister Rogers' Neighborhood's Land of Make-believe, there's the royal family: King Friday XIII, his wife Queen Saturday, and their son Prince Tuesday.
  • In the spin-off Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, the family was the same, plus a second son Prince Wednesday.
• One Inspector Morse episode has a female television presenter known as Friday. Her actual name is Frideswide. The prequel series Endeavour introduces us to Inspector Thursday, Constable Morse's Mentor Archetype.
• In Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger, the highest-ranking underlings of Tauzant in the Jakanja have such names: Manmaruba = Monday, Chuuzubo = Tuesday ("Chu-zu-de-i"), Wendinu = Wednesday, Sargain = Thursday ("Sa-zu-de-i"), Furabijo = Friday (Fu-ra-i-de-i), Satorakura = Saturday, Sandaru = Sunday
• In My Hero (2000), Thermoman's Clark Kenting name is George Sunday. The Other Darrin takes the Secret Identity George Monday.
• Shortland Street's Tuesday Warner.
• In Brazilian sitcom Sai de Baixo, Upper-Class Twit Caco Antibes referenced this trope while joking on how the lower classes of Brazil love foreign-sounding names: "I saw some great baby names in my calendar! Sunday, Monday, Tuesday..."
• American Gods: Shadow meets a man on a plane who goes by "Wednesday." It's obviously a pseudonym, but also a clear hint that he is actually Odin, the ultimate source of the name "Wednesday."
  Shadow: What's your name?
  Wednesday: What day is it?
  Shadow: Wednesday.
  Wednesday: [sing-song voice] Then I guess it's my day...

Music

• Mister Saturday Night
• The refrain of "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" by The Beatles:
  • Didn't anybody tell her/Didn't anybody see/Sunday's on the phone to Monday/Tuesday's on the phone to me."
  • Don't forget that Monday's child has learned to tie his bootlaces in "Lady Madonna".
• The Sundays
• The Saturdays
• Ruby Tuesday.
• Happy Mondays
• Thursday
• And on that note, The Weeknd with their second album, Thursday.
• Taking Back Sunday

Myth & Legend

• Baron Samedi, the Voodoo Loa, and any character inspired by him.
• Jewish lore says that when Esther became queen she gave her handmaids these names to help keep track of when it was the Sabbath. However, she felt that such simple names were degrading (keep in mind that in Hebrew, these would be "First-Day, Second-Day," etc. up until the Sabbath), so she instead named them after what God created on each particular day during the creation story.

Theatre

• Monsieur Dimanche (Sunday), the creditor in Dom Juan by Molière. The reason for this name is unclear.

Video Games

• Discworld Noir has Mundy, a parody of Thursby from The Maltese Falcon.
• Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: Multi-Purpose Super-Robot Thursday!
• Giado Venerdi (Italian for "Friday"), Latooni Subota (Russian for "Saturday"), and Garnet Sunday from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation.
• Nigel the elf from Landstalker has a Fairy Companion named Friday.
• Killer7 has a creepy, wide-eyed Remnant Psyche child who shows up just before the special Heaven Smile fight in each level named Kess Bloodysunday.
• In Pokémon Gold and Silver, Crystal and the remakes Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver there are seven NPCs called the Week Siblings, whose names resemble days of the week: Monica of Monday, Tuscany of Tuesday, Wesley of Wednesday, Arthur of Thursday, Frieda of Friday, Santos of Saturday, and Sunny of Sunday. They appear on the day of the week they're named after in various locations and initially provide type enhancing items. In the remakes if they've all been met, they then give out ribbons for Pokémon to wear.
• In Dark Cloud there are a series of enemies named after the days of the week in Wise Owl Forest.
• In Skies of Arcadia, Vyse’s rival explorer is named Domingo, the Spanish word for Sunday.

Webcomics

• Cucumber Quest has the globetrotting thief, Saturday. She is a case of an Odd Name Out, because her name doesn't really fit in with any of the kingdoms' Theme Naming. Later subverted when we found out that her real name is Princess Azalea, of the Flower Kingdom.
• Missing Monday: The title character is named Monday Rhodes and she has a sister named Tuesday.
• The 7 phoenixes in Homestuck fancomic Hexane each have a screen name made up of two words that abbreviates to the short form of on of the days of the week. For example, Qamarkino's is multiOmnician, abbreviating to MO for Monday.

Web Original

• Two from Survival of the Fittest, Wednesday Ryan and Wednesday Garci.
• The eponymous Jack Saturday from Jesse Hajicek's ''Jack Saturday Can't Fail''.
• The seven titular Chimeras in Aoi Yūki's YUKI×AOI Chimera Project are all named after the seven days of the week.

Western Animation

• The Flintstones: "Hey, Tuesday Wednesday, what are you doing Saturday?"
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: "Aqua Teens, come out and meet your doom, for we are Sunday-Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday!"
• The short-lived Nickelodeon cartoon The X's featured teenaged daughter Tuesday X.
• The titular family of The Secret Saturdays.
  • Don't forget their evil twins, The Mondays.
    • Who didn't really have a specific name; Zack decided to call them "the Mondays" because Monday (the first day of the work-week, or seeing as how he's just a kid, more likely the school week) is essentially the "opposite" of Saturday (the start of the weekend.)
• Mr. Monday, a particularly sillier supervillain who appeared a few times on The Venture Brothers and was obsessed with Mondays. Like when The Monarch is masterminding a jailbreak scheme, Mr. Monday insists that they do it on a Monday.
• The Looney Tunes spoof of Dragnet, "Rocket Squad":
  My name is Monday. My partner's name is Tuesday. He always follows me.
• Kwame in Captain Planet and the Planeteers probably fits-as stated below,'Kwame' means 'Saturday'.

Real Life

• Actress Tuesday Weld, whose name the Flintstones example pastiched.
• Wednesday Burns-White of Websnark.
• Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban named their daughter Sunday Rose.
• "Domenica", meaning "Sunday", is a common name in Italy. As is the Spanish equivalent Domingo, usually as the surname Dominguez.
  • Aside for that, Italian law openly opposes this trope: if the name is deemed too embarrassing the clerk at the registry office can refuse to register it, as a court sustained when a couple tried to name their son Venerdì (Friday).
• There's a Goth model with the stage name Wednesday Mourning.
• British Pop band The Saturdays. And The Sundays.
• Day of the week names are VERY common in some parts of Africa. (Almost always as men's names.) In particular, there are names that you would usually name children if they were born on a certain day of the week. For example, Kofi for Friday, Kwaku for Wednesday, Kwame for Saturday, etc.
  Two famous examples are former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah (although the latter appears to have actually been born on a Tuesday, there may have been a mixup in the day reckoning).
  • The same is frequent in Burma/Myanmar and Tibet.
• You know that joke where a man rides into town on day name and leaves another day name after staying some duration that doesn't add up? The horse's name is one of the two days mentioned.
• Susan Sontag (German for Sunday).
• Chef Amanda Freitag
• The actress who played Kristen in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master has the memorable name of Tuesday Knight.
• Former MLB player and current Dodger radio play-by-play announcer Rick Monday.
• For a time leading up until around World War I, there was an ongoing Serial Escalation in terms of number and weight of guns mounted on battleships (it eventually normed out at around three or four turrets, since this was the most you could practically mount without the guns blocking each other's fields of fire). Possibly the apex of this was HMS Agincourt, originally designed for the Brazilian Navy with a main battery of seven turrets. Each turret was unofficially named for a different day of the week, with Sunday the foremost turret and Saturday the turret at the stern.^note Under the traditional British system of turret naming, the bow-facing turrets would have been A and B, the center turrets P and Q, and the stern turrets X, Y and Z.
• Competitive wakeboarder Dallas Friday.
• Rupert Grint and Georgia Groome named their daughter Wednesday.
• Foundlings were often named after the days of the week that they were found, or recent/upcoming important days such as Easter.
• The Jewish messiah claimant Shabbetai Zvi was named after Shabbat, the day he was born.
• Canadian singer and voice actress Sunday Muse.

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