In the names of the days of the week in English:

A little while ago, Lis and I got randomly curious about why the English names of the week are as they are.

Sun, moon, okay, those make sense. And Saturn, that's a planet. Sure. But then -- Tyr, Woden, Thor, and Freya? How come we get four Germanic/Norse gods, and three planets?

Wouldn't you assume that our seven-day week would come from, say, the seven classical "planets"? You've got those seven alchemical/astrological signs, and the first two are "sun" and "moon", and the last one is "Saturn", so what's with the stuff in the middle?

The seven classical planets are "sun", "moon", "Mercury", "Venus", "Mars", "Jupiter", "Saturn."

In French, the days of the week are "Dimanche" ("Lord's Day"), "Lundi" (moon day), "Mardi" (Mars day), "Mercredi" (Mercury day), Jeudi (Jupiter day), Vendredi (Venus day), Samedi (Saturn day). In Italian, you've got "domenica" ("Lord's day"), lunedi, martedi, mercoledi, giovedi, venerdi, sabato ("Sabbath", or Shabbat in Hebrew.)

So, in a lot of Christian areas, the name for Sunday gets swapped to one more obviously Christian, and the one for Saturday can keep the Jewish one sometimes. But, otherwise, we're basically on "sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn."

So what happens in English?

Sun stays Sun. Moon stays Moon. Mars -- turns into Tyr. Okay, I can see that -- I think of Tyr as a god of justice, but he's also a god of single combat and heroic victory. And "Tyr" was pronounced as "Tiw" by the Anglo-Saxons.

Mercury -- turns into Odin, or Woden. Well, more likely "Wodenaz", as the earliest spelling of the name which later turned into Odin, Woden, Wotan, and so forth. To me, that seems like a stretch, but it appears that the Romans identified Wodenaz with Mercury, with Julius Caesar saying that of all the gods, the worship of Mercury was the most important to the Gauls. One probable connection is that both Mercury and Wodenaz were responsible for leading souls; another, that they were both associated with poetry and the mind.

Now, I would have associated Mars with Thor, but the association made in the days of the week is that Jupiter equals Thor. Because one of their main aspects is "thunder". So I can buy that. And the association of Venus and Freya seems obvious and simple.

So, that's that. Our days of the week actually ARE named after the seven classical planets -- but four of them were "translated" into Germanic.

Sun
Moon
Mars/Tyr/Tiw
Mercury/Woden
Jupiter/Thor
Venus/Freya
Saturn

Ain't Wikipedia grand?

You know what's awesome?

Army-surplus wool trousers when it's cold and snowy out.

Remember folks: cotton doesn't insulate when it's wet. Wool does. Wool uniform trousers from some Eastern European military surplus that your local military surplus shop managed to pick up insulates best of all.

Okay, technically, there are warmer fabrics out there. But I like these.