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A Long, Painful History of Time (1999)
- smitty1e 5y ago"Time is a Western disease."--Mike Mulligan, typically uttered upon late arrival to meeting.
- dotancohen 5y agoOverall this is a great article, but it has quite a few historical misconceptions. One blatant example: > In the present context, the names of the Roman months have been adopted by all > Western languages, while the names of days of the week have more recent and > diverse names, probably because weeks are a fairly recent concept. The seven-day week had been a concept for least a millennia before the current Roman-derived names of the months.
- JNRowe 5y agoRob Eastaway's excellent How Long is a Piece of String¹ covers the history of month and day names in its first chapter. Thirteen pages from 30000 BCE to now, via abundant and perfect numbers. Day names eventually being explained with the following table: Planet day English French ---------- ---------- ---------- Saturn *Saturday* *Samedi* Sun *Sunday* Dimanche Moon *Monday* *Lundi* Mars Tuesday *Mardi* Mercury Wednesday *Mercredi* Jupiter Thursday *Jeudi* Venus Friday *Vendredi* I'll admit I'd somehow never spotted that Lundi comes via diēs Lūnae, even though Dimanche from diēs Dominicus jumped out even to my English tongue. It also contains a lovely example of how day names would be different if other objects were visible in the night sky with the naked eye. [I'm pimping the book here because I imagine its mix of math and quirky backstories would be appealing to the HN crowd.] ¹ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/632979.How_Long_Is_a_Piece_of_String_ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/632979.How_Long_Is_a_Pie...