planets and the days of the week

Just in case you didn't know, the names for the days of the week are derived from the planets (although this is probably easier to recognize in languages more closely related to Latin).

Sunday - well, duh
Monday - Moon
Tuesday - Mars
Wednesday - Mercury
Thursday - Jupiter
Friday - Venus
Saturday - Saturn

What I found really interesting is that Japanese days are pretty close in association.

Sunday - nichiyoubi/Sun
Monday - getsuyoubi/Moon
Tuesday - kayoubi/Fire (I mean, who is the most firey planet?)
Wednesday - suiyoubi/Water (OK, so the correlation isn't exact)
Thursday - mokuyoubi/Wood
Friday - kinyoubi/Metal or Gold
Saturday - douyoubi/Earth (who is the most 'material' planet?)

Not sure how this came about, but interesting nonetheless...

Actually the names are derived from old gods and godesses names. You can find it in latin languages with greco-latin gods and in german languages with german gods. Thats why in english planets names doesn't fit well. There's the few examples i can remember...

Wednesday - Wodan's day
Thursday - Thor's day
Friday - Frey/Freyja day

Here you have it in Spanish:
Lunes - Luna (=Moon)
Martes- Marte (=Mars)
Miercoles- Mercurio
Jueves- Jupiter
Viernes- Venus
Sabado- Saturno
Domingo- Dominus (?) --> meaning The Lord

Oh, well! Not sure about wich god goes for each day... Anyways what i wanted to post is that the week names come from old gods, not from planets.
I guess planet names are coming from latin, and it have gods names because of the beliefs people had.

About the japanese names didn't know nothing before...

oh right! Good point. But yes, many of the planets are named after greek gods ie. mercury is both the planet and god. Actually thanks for the English relations. My sister and I were thinking of the Spanish/French names which matched up w/the Latin (esp Spanish of course) and couldn't understand why the English was so out of whack

Isthmus,

Thanks for the Japanese days - I've never seen them before. Incidentally Gold seems quite apt for Venus as ruler of Taurus. Good things and the good life come from having plenty of Gold LOL.

On the English days - Tuesday is called after Tiw -or Tyr the Norse god of War (and therefore corresponding directly with Mars)

As well as each day being ruled by a deity, each hour of the day is also ruled by a deity. Taking today, Friday, as an example, the ruler of the hour from Sunrise is Venus (it's Venus' day) and each successive hour is ruled by one of the Seven original planetary gods in Chaldean order - i.e. Mercury rules the second hour, the Moon the third and then back to Saturn for the fourth. As I write this the current ruler is the Sun.

'Hours' here are not all 60 minutes long - the total hours of daylight are divided by 12 to get the length of the planetary 'day' and the total hours of darkness are divided by 12 to get the planetary 'night'