Name The Day
Of celestial customs, weekday names, action figures and respect.
Trends come and go. Many now question if the term has lost its import, given the speed with which they form and dissipate; ballooning with social media, deflated by distraction and the next shiny thing. I’m more interested in how they take shape. The answer to that has been predictably disappointing in recent times- technology. Tools power the idea often, and their ability both create and enable the wildfire deciding if an idea makes it. Then, occasionally, there are creative efforts that burst through for sheer human craft.
At the other end are ideas and customs formed by a culture, by civilisations, enduring across millennia. Threaded into our lives till we barely notice. Somehow, we have a bit of all these today.
What Day Is It?: The names of our days
Friday Find: See it differently
Trendy: Of Ghibli & action figures
With: Backyard Banksy and spiritual fries.
1. What Day Is It?
I’ll admit this is a question that has come up a few times over the years, though in the peripheries of my curiosity. No, not a spaced-out “what day is it?” (which might have happened a few times, but those are stories for elsewhere).
It is the question of our day names, and why they seem so similar across cultures. Every time we complain about Monday or celebrate Friday, we are in some ways invoking ancient deities and celestial bodies. Or are we?
The mundanity of our weekday names reclines on a global story of astronomy, religion, conquest, and cultural exchange.
Why Seven? A Tale of Two Origins
First, why do we have a seven-day week at all? Why not eight? Or five? Or fifteen?
Our week didn't just appear out of thin air; two major civilisations seemingly independently^ arrived at this cosmic calculation.
Circa 2000 BCE, Mesopotamia. Babylonian astronomers observed seven visible celestial bodies: the Sun, Moon, and five planets that were ‘wandering stars’ in their cosmology (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). These became the basis for dividing time into seven-day cycles, with each ‘planet’ governing a specific day, lending them their names.
Meanwhile, in ancient India, a seven-day week emerged, also through some sophisticated astronomical observations. The Sūrya Siddhānta, a significant astronomical text (~400–500 CE in current form, though rooted in older oral tradition), provides detailed calculations for planetary hours, which lead to seven days and each being assigned a celestial body, and so the Sanskrit names for days—Ravivāra (Sun day), Somavāra (Moon day), Shanivāra (Saturn Day), and so on.
So both cultures used ‘The Seven’ to name the days. (Not to be confused with The Seven of Westeros).
The Babylonian system influenced Jewish traditions, which later shaped Christian and Islamic calendars. In China, the seven-day week was introduced much later (around 4th century CE) through Central Asian influences, Buddhist monks, and Manichaean practices.
A seemingly unified globalised practice which really, wasn’t quite so singular.
From Planets to Gods
The Greeks took this Babylonian planetary approach into their cosmology and names (think Zeus, Ares, Aphrodite and the gang).
And so to the Romans, because, always Romans. They took the same celestial system and gave it a mythological makeover. Each planet already had an associated deity in Roman religion, so Dies Solis became the Sun god's day, Dies Lunae the Moon goddess's day, Dies Martis Mars's day, and so on in Latin.
Then, Roman culture collided with Germanic and Norse tribes through trade and conquest, because Romans traded a lot and conquered even more. A fascinating and long-reaching cultural translation ensued. The Germanic peoples were hardly going to just adopt these foreign gods. Instead, they too matched Roman deities with their own equivalents- a divine mapping, of sorts:
So, we have:
Mars (war) → Tiw/Tyr (Germanic war god) → Tuesday
Mercury (messenger, trickster) → Woden/Odin (wisdom, magic) → Wednesday
Jupiter (thunder, king of gods) → Thor (thunder) → Thursday
Venus (love, beauty) → Frigg (love, fertility) → Friday
Saturn’s day persisted in Latin, for some reason. Sun and Mo(o)n stayed too.
Old Norse thorsdagr, for example, was literally Thor’s Day, **Old English thunresdæg was Thunder’s day (both Jupiter and Thor were gods of thunder). Wōdnesdæg was literally Woden’s Day; while Frīġedæġ was Frigg’s day, the wife of Odin and goddess of marriage and motherhood; Venus was the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility.
All still persist, scattered in language. Venus still fondly looks over the French "Vendredi" and the Spanish "Viernes"; Mardi in French is from the Latin Martis for Mars*.*
Now, we speak these divine names every week without a second thought.
Beyond the Gods
Not everyone jumped on the deity-naming bandwagon.
In Arabic, most days follow a refreshingly straightforward numerical system: Al-Ahad (first), Al-Ithnayn (second), etc. Simple! (With exceptions for religious significance- Fridays are Al-Juma'a, or gathering day.) Hebrew too uses numbers (Yom Rishon, Yom Sheni) for most days, reserving special terms for the Sabbath (Yom Shabbat). Even Portuguese uses numerical names for weekdays (e.g., segunda-feira for Monday), reflecting Catholic liturgical practices.
East Asian languages like Japanese created their own synthesis, adopting planetary associations, but expressing them through elemental terms :
Mars/Tuesday → Fire → Kayōbi
Mercury/Wednesday → Water → Suiyōbi
Jupiter/Thursday → Wood (木) → Mokuyōbi
Venus/Friday → Metal/Gold (金) → Kin'yōbi
The Week Never Dies
It is pretty remarkable how ancient—and resilient—this seven-day week and the naming conventions around it are. Many have tried- ‘calendar reformers’ included the French Revolutionary calendar’s ten-day "décade" system; the Soviet Union’s experiment with five and six-day weeks in the 1930s.
Yet the seven-day week endures, outlasting empires, revolutions, and technological paradigm shifts. Our ultra-modern, technology-pumped lives still operate within frameworks established by ancient stargazers.
So next time you check the calendar or moan about Mondays, pause a moment. Pause to consider that we’re participating in a tradition stretching back to ancient Babylonian astronomers, Vedic scholars, Roman mythologists and Norse imagination. That mundane Tuesday meeting is a war day gathering; the Wednesday webinar invokes the ruler of Valhalla; your Thursday thoughts are shaped by thunder.
Or, don’t. After all, it’s just another day.
^ There appears to be some academic debate around how independent these were, with some suggesting Indian systems were also influenced by the Babylonia, via Persia.
2. Friday Find: See It Differently
Today we have an incredible showcase of film craft. This is a spot that embraces the very effort which brings us entertainment we love; celebrating the human endeavour itself as the reason to watch. The work is the message, if you will.
#FridayFind: This is ‘See It Differently’, a spot from Britbox, the British streamer moving into the US.
“One actor. 11 sets. 50 crew. No AI.”
As stop-motion marvel, this is one eye-catching continuous sequence, filmed over 14+ hours, with one actor, 11 different sets, 4 different genres, 50 crew members, 10 make-up artists and wardrobe stylists.
Now that you know it, watch it again.
“A love letter to production craft and the brilliance of film crews,” it took 14 hours, 14 minutes and 31 seconds to be precise. To be clear, that’s one continuously filmed sequence.
The “No AI” in the the blurbs is a statement too. In showcasing craftsmanship, this looks to be an antidote to the flood of AI-generated imagery.
“In an era of AI automation, BritBox wanted to show there’s still value in craft and doing things for real,” said Sam Walker, global creative partner at Uncommon.
The ’How They Did It’ video is a great watch too. So much to look out for :
· Directed by Nicos Livesy · Uncommon · Blinkink · Millenium FX · Soundtree ·
3. Trendy
Felt like touching on a couple of AI-inspired trends. I use ‘inspired’ loosely.
The one with Studio Ghibli
It exploded online in the last couple of weeks. I didn’t really want to dive into it, but in the greater interest of you, dear reader, who might possibly be sane and mostly missed it, here’s what it was.
People turned their images into whimsical, dreamy Ghibli-style art using ChatGPT’s generator. That’s Studio Ghibli, the animation unit from Japan, founded by legend Hayao Miyazaki in the 80s, and responsible for some of the most culturally influential films in the last few decades, with a resurgent popularity outside of Japan too, in recent streaming years. It is known for beautiful, often hand-drawn visuals, sparing use of CGI, shaping stories and themes of friendship, nature and the human spirit.
Fierce backlash hit the viral fun (though the tsunami of images barely abated, OpenAI had to restrict usage). Artists and fans pushed back hard, calling it soulless, disrespectful, and a lazy ripoff of a deeply human, hand-crafted style. Critics slammed it as digital theft- appropriating a deeply personal art style without consent. (That’s right, no consent whatsoever, but that seems par for the course). For many, it felt like watching something meaningful and magical get flattened into… a gimmick. Playful nostalgia became a flashpoint for the ethics of generative AI.
It also brought back something Miyazaki said years ago, calling AI generated imagery, “an insult to life.” A lot of people agree.
*I am not sharing them here, go look for a few of the gazillion out there, if you wish!
The one with action figures
We most definitely live in a time where personal identity has become a product. Not a week goes by without the term personal branding being bandied about in some context or another. We all need to have a personal brand. Because at the end of the day, we are all selling something. Yes,. Ok. Thank you. We get it.
The latest AI-trend aka V1168724921 of “lets consume incredible amount of resources for some social media fun!”, has been to use Chat GPT to create ‘action figures’ of oneself. (Or, hey, of anyone at all, because copyright, what image copyright). People have scrambled on to the bandwagon, and you can kinda see why. It seems harmless, seems less obviously egregious from an ethical POV. Some call it harmless play. Others see it as a mirror of a culture obsessed with packaging ourselves for attention.
But hey, its cute. So there’s that.
No, I won’t now proceed to share my own action figure. Instead, here are a bunch of what people have been doing so you know what we are on about; and more fun- a few opinions on the trend.
“The bar moves ever lower as we limbo endlessly into the night.” _Nick Moran
“feels like an apt metaphor for how we’ve transformed from the creators to the consumers and now, finally, to the consumed, our bodies processed and packaged up by a capitalist system which knows only unbridled growth at any cost.” _mystgalaxybooks
“This AI barbie trend thing is so creepy, like can we not” _kaitie.reads
“If I wanna see myself as an action figure I just make a lil guy out of clay. Why can’t that be a trend. Us making ourselves out a of play doh?” _graveheartart
“The 3D action toy figure trend is making my head explode.” _lostThreadsUser
“Every AI Barbie I see kills a little bit more of my soul.” _makerandmoxie
If you really want to get into what this says about humanity, you could always go that cheery Marx fellow. As Mark Ritson did. “One of the many things that Marx correctly predicted was that the process of commodification– of turning something into a sellable good– would only be complete when people within society started to make commodities of themselves. His prediction of the ‘commodification of self’, made more than a century ago, has proven prophetic.”
Or then there’s this quote from Erich Fromm in his book written 70 years ago!
“Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.”
Masala Peanuts
(where I share stories or tidbits I find interesting).
Read: “What do you do when you wake up with a Banksy on your wall?”. This piece gives us a hint or three, ahead of a new podcast season on the famed street artist.
Watch: A “musically blessed gentleman” aka Papaji, eminently godman-like, has discovered a unique rhythm only possible while shaking the Shake Shake bag. McDonalds India goes the mockumentary route to promote its popular fries.
Read: “The viral Ghibli images produced by ChatGPT are not made with malice aforethought, but they represent the worst bits of AI-produced media.” The Studio Ghibli generator goes against everything I love about those movies.
Add To Queue
The Acquired podcast’s epic episode on the IPL, tracing its commercial journey as one of the most successful sports leagues, and in doing so tracing an arc of Indian cricket as well. Its an incredible business story, and story.
Off for a glass of cold water.