I am sure you have wondered about this. Is Sunday or Monday the first day of the week? If you haven’t, then you haven’t bought a calender in Canada and sent it as a gift to someone in Germany.
Calendars with weeks starting on Sunday and Monday
Coming from Canada, the calendar week always started on Sunday. Now, living Germany, I have to get used to writing my calendar notes not on Tuesday when I meant to write it on Monday! Confusing? It is for me.
Sometime back in 2001 when I first moved to Berlin, I walked into my doctor’s office expecting to see my doctor. The receptionist said, “Oh, your appointment was yesterday.” “On Sunday?”, I thought to myself. I was working with a North American calendar in my head.
Did Napoleon Do This?
But why should these calendars be so different? I don’t have a good answer, but it might have to do with Napoleon changing lots of structural organization of European culture. Imperial to Metric, Base 12 to Base 10. So, why not change the calendar structure so the week starts when the first work day starts?
Sometime back in ancient history, that is, before 1970, someone – perhaps Napoleon – decided the first day of the week was Monday. Makes sense. Most Europeans start work on Monday. But so do Americans and Canadians.
Etymology
The etymology of the Germanic word Sunday (in German Sonntag) doesn’t help us. It’s named after the sun. But as most of us know, the sun can shine on any day of the week. In the Judeo-Christian and Islamic cultures, the “first day of the week” was usually what we in the Germanic countries call Sunday. According to Wikipedia, the Greeks call Sunday The Lord’s Day (Κυριακή), whereas Monday is Day Two, Tuesday is Day Three. This means Sunday is Day One. The Portuguese and the Vietnamese, surprisingly, also use the same method as the Greeks. On the other hand, Slavic countries make Monday Day One.
ISO Standard 8601
Let’s leave the final word for the ISO, the International Standards Organization. The ISO standard for calendar weeks ISO 8601:2004(E):
Week date representations are in the format as shown in the box to the right. [YYYY] indicates the ISO week-numbering year which is slightly different to the calendar year (see below). [Www] is the week number prefixed by the letter ‘W’, from W01 through W53. [D] is the weekday number, from 1 through 7, beginning with Monday and ending with Sunday.
So, that’s it. Despite North America’s clinging to a Judeo-Christian printing of Calendar weeks starting with Sunday, in technology, the first day of the week is MONDAY.
