How Many Days are There in a Week

Introduction

There are seven days in a week namely Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. According to Christian mythology, God created the world in 7 days and hence the modern calendar has 7 days in a week. According to the ISO Geneva convention, Monday is the first day of the week and the week ends on Sunday. In every month except the non-leap year February, there are 4 complete weeks and some additional days. A non-leap year February with 28 days contains exactly 4 weeks. Almost all the years have 52 weeks except for years starting on a Thursday or a leap year starting on a Wednesday which has 53 weeks.

Week

A week is a standard unit of 7 days in many measurement systems. The duration of the week varies in various mythologies like how in ancient Egyptian concepts, there were 8 days in a week. Certain weeks are termed holy weeks according to many religious beliefs and formal concepts. The 7 days of a week are subdivided into workweek and weekend. In most regions of the world, weekends are considered to be from Friday evening to Sunday evening, although it differs in some parts of the world. A week contains 7 days, 168 hours, 10080 minutes, and 604800 seconds.

Days of The Week

The days of the week are named after the 7 classical planets. The order of naming is not according to their order of location to the earth but the planetary hours. Here are the days of the weeks and the planets they were named from:

Sunday: Sun

Monday: Moon

Tuesday: Mars

Wednesday: Mercury

Thursday: Jupiter

Friday: Venus

Saturday: Saturn

History

The history of the origin of the seven-day week is usually connected to Jewish and Christian mythology where God created the world in 6 days and took rest on the 7th day. But, there are also stories that before that, Sumerians and Babylonians divided the year into sets of seven days each with one day every week for recreation. Various regions across the world including China, Japan, Europe, India and Islamic nations have various evidence suggesting the division of 7-day weeks as sculptures or literature.

Calendars

Throughout history, there is evidence of various calendars being used across different parts of the world with varying numbers of days in a week. In the pre-modern calendar systems, there is a mention of an eight-day week in Ancient Rome and in the pre-Christian Celtic calendar. A nine-day week was mentioned in Baltic languages and in Welsh. Also, a ten-day week was considered in ancient Chinese and Egyptian calendars. Six-day weeks were also found in the Akan Calendar till 1981. Calendars like Icelandic and Javanese used a five-day week system.

In the modern calendar format, there are seven days in a week. But the international fixed calendar had seven-day weeks with 13 months in a year with 28 days each. In the soviet union for a few decades, factory workers used five or six work weeks while others used seven-day weeks as usual. In the lunar calendar, each week has approximately 7 3⁄8 days.

Conclusion

From early on, we have heard and learned that weeks contain seven days and each day has its own unique name. But it is also important to know that it has not always been this way and there were variations in the number of days in different calendars made and followed by various cultures. As of today, most of the world follows the concept that a week contains seven days and their names originated from planets.