Sol Iustitiae (Sun of Righteousness), derived from the Judeo-Christian Bible, Malachi 4:2.

By
Albrecht Dürer, circa 1499/1500

Sunday is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. Sunday is a day of rest in most
Western countries, as a part of the weekend and weeknight.

For most observant Christians, Sunday is observed as a day of worship and rest, holding it as the
Lord's Day and the day of Christ's resurrection. In some Muslim countries and Israel, Sunday is
the first work day of the week. According to the Hebrew calendar and traditional Christian
calendars, Sunday is the first day of the week.[1] But according to the International Organization
for Standardization ISO 8601, Sunday is the seventh day of the week.[2]

Contents
 1Etymology
 2Position in the week
o 2.1ISO 8601
o 2.2Culture and languages
 3Sunday in Christianity
o 3.1Pagan correspondence
o 3.2Christian usage
o 3.3Modern practices
 4Common occurrences on Sunday
o 4.1In government and business
o 4.2In media
o 4.3In sports
 5Astrology
  6Named days
 7See also
 8Notes
 9Sources
 10Further reading
 11External links

Etymology[edit]

A depiction of Máni, the personified Moon, and his sister Sól, the personified Sun, from Norse
mythology (1895) by Lorenz Frølich.

Sunday is named after the Sun

The name "Sunday", the day of the Sun, is derived from Hellenistic astrology, where the seven
planets, known in English as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon, each
had an hour of the day assigned to them, and the planet which was regent during the first hour of
any day of the week gave its name to that day. During the 1st and 2nd century, the week of seven
days was introduced into Rome from Egypt, and the Roman names of the planets were given to
each successive day.
Germanic peoples seem to have adopted the week as a division of time from the Romans, but
they changed the Roman names into those of corresponding Teutonic deities. Hence, the dies
Solis became Sunday (German, Sonntag).

The English noun Sunday derived sometime before 1250 from sunedai, which itself developed
from Old English (before 700) Sunnandæg (literally meaning "sun's day"), which is cognate to
other Germanic languages, including Old Frisian sunnandei, Old Saxon sunnundag, Middle
Dutch sonnendach (modern Dutch zondag), Old High German sunnun tag (modern German
Sonntag), and Old Norse sunnudagr (Danish and Norwegian søndag, Icelandic sunnudagur and
Swedish söndag). The Germanic term is a Germanic interpretation of Latin dies solis ("day of
the sun"), which is a translation of the Ancient Greek heméra helíou.[3] The p-Celtic Welsh
language also translates the Latin "day of the sun" as dydd Sul.

In most Indian languages, the word for Sunday is Ravivāra or Adityavāra or its derived forms —
vāra meaning day, Aditya and Ravi both being a style (manner of address) for Surya i.e. the Sun
and Suryadeva the chief solar deity and one of the Adityas. Ravivāra is first day cited in Jyotisha,
which provides logical reason for giving the name of each week day. In the Thai solar calendar
of Thailand, the name ("Waan Arthit") is derived from Aditya, and the associated colour is red.

In Russian the word for Sunday is Воскресенье (Voskreseniye) meaning "Resurrection".[4] In

The Modern Greek word for Sunday, Greek: Κυριακή, is derived from Greek: Κύριος (Kyrios,
Lord) also, due to its liturgical significance as the day commemorating the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, i.e. The Lord's Day.

In Korean, Sunday is called 일요일 Il-yo-Il, meaning "day of sun". In Japanese, Sunday is 日曜
日 Nichiyōbi, which translates to "sun day".

Position in the week[edit]

The international standard ISO 8601 for representation of dates and times, states that Sunday is
the seventh and last day of the week.[5] This method of representing dates and times
unambiguously was first published in 1988.

Culture and languages[edit]

Main article: Names of the days of the week § Numbered days of the week

In the Judaic, some Christian, as well as in some Islamic tradition, Sunday has been considered
the first day of the week. A number of languages express this position either by the name for the
day or by the naming of the other days. In Hebrew it is called ‫ יום ראשון‬yom rishon, in Arabic
‫ اﻷحد‬al-ahad, in Persian and related languages ‫ يکشنبه‬yek-shanbe, all meaning "first".

In Greek, the names of the days Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday ("Δευτέρα",
"Τρίτη", "Τετάρτη" and "Πέμπτη") mean "second", "third", "fourth", and "fifth" respectively.
This leaves Sunday in the first position of the week count. The current Greek name for Sunday,
Κυριακή (Kyriake), means "Lord's Day" coming from the word Κύριος (Kyrios), which is the
Greek word for "Lord". Similarly in Portuguese, where the days from Monday to Friday are
counted as "segunda-feira", "terça-feira", "quarta-feira", "quinta-feira" and "sexta-feira", while
Sunday itself similar to Greek has the name of "Lord's Day" ("domingo"). In Vietnamese, the
working days in the week are named as: "Thứ Hai" (second day), "Thứ Ba" (third day), "Thứ
Tư" (fourth day), "Thứ Năm" (fifth day), "Thứ Sáu" (sixth day), "Thứ Bảy" (seventh day).
Sunday is called "Chủ Nhật", a corrupted form of "Chúa Nhật" meaning "Lord's Day". Some
colloquial text in the south of Vietnam and from the church may still use the old form to mean
Sunday. In German, Wednesday is called "Mittwoch", literally "mid-week", implying that weeks
run from Sunday to Saturday.

The name is similar in the Romance Languages. In Italian, Sunday is called "domenica", which
also means "Lord's Day" (from Latin "Dies Dominica"). One finds similar cognates in French,
where the name is "dimanche", as well as Romanian ("duminică") and Spanish and Portuguese
("domingo").

Slavic languages implicitly number Monday as day number one, not two.

literal or derived
Polish Slovak Czech Bulgarian Russian
meaning
Monday poniedziałek pondelok pondělí понеделник понедельник (day) after not working
Tuesday wtorek utorok úterý вторник вторник second (day)
Wednesday środa streda středa сряда среда middle (day)
Thursday czwartek štvrtok čtvrtek четвъртък четверг fourth (day)
Friday piątek piatok pátek петък пятница fifth (day)
Saturday sobota sobota sobota събота суббота sabbath
Sunday niedziela nedela neděle неделя воскресенье not working (day)

Russian воскресение (Sunday) means "resurrection (of Jesus)" (that is the day of a week which
commemorates it). In Old Russian Sunday was also called неделя "free day" or "day with no
work", but in the contemporary language this word means "week". Hungarian péntek (Friday) is
a Slavic loanword, so the correlation with "five" is not evident to Hungarians. Hungarians use
Vasárnap for Sunday, which means "market day".

In the Maltese language, due to its Siculo-Arabic origin, Sunday is called "Il-Ħadd", a corruption
of "wieħed" meaning "one". Monday is "It-Tnejn" meaning "two". Similarly Tuesday is "It-
Tlieta" (three), Wednesday is "L-Erbgħa" (four) and Thursday is "Il-Ħamis" (five).
In Armenian, Monday is (Yerkoushabti) literally meaning 2nd day of the week, Tuesday
(Yerekshabti) 3rd day, Wednesday (Chorekshabti) 4th day, Thursday (Hingshabti) 5th day.
Saturday is (Shabat) coming from the word Sabbath or Shabbath in Hebrew, and "Kiraki"
coming from the word "Krak" meaning "fire" is Sunday, "Krak" describing the sun by fire.
Apostle John also refers to the "Lord's Day" (in Greek, Κυριακή ἡμέρα, "kyriake hemera" i.e. the
day of the Lord) in Rev. 1:10, which is another possible origin of the Armenian word for Sunday.

However, in many European countries calendars almost always show Monday as the first day of
the week,[6] which follows the ISO 8601 standard.

In the Persian calendar, Sunday is the second day of the week. However, it is called "number
one" as counting starts from zero; the first day - Saturday - is denoted as 00.

Sunday in Christianity[edit]
Pagan correspondence[edit]

In Roman culture, Sunday was the day of the Sun god. In paganism, the Sun was a source of life,
giving warmth and illumination to mankind. It was the center of a popular cult among Romans,
who would stand at dawn to catch the first rays of sunshine as they prayed. [dubious – discuss]

The opportunity to spot in the nature-worship of their heathen neighbors a symbolism valid to
their own faith was not lost on the Christians. One of the Church fathers, St. Jerome, would
declare: "If pagans call [the Lord's Day] [...] the 'day of the sun,' we willingly agree, for today the
light of the world is raised, today is revealed the sun of justice with healing in his rays." [7]

A similar consideration may have influenced the choice of the Christmas date on the day of the
winter solstice, whose celebration was part of the Roman cult of the Sun. [dubious – discuss][8] In the same
vein, Christian churches have been built and are still being built (as far as possible) with an
orientation so that the congregation faced toward the sunrise in the East. Much later, St. Francis
would sing in his famous canticle: "Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially
through my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through him. And he is
beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness."

Christian usage[edit]

See also: Sabbath in Christianity

The ancient Romans traditionally used the eight-day nundinal cycle, a market week, but in the
time of Augustus in the 1st century AD, a seven-day week also came into use.

Justin Martyr, in the mid 2nd century, mentions "memoirs of the apostles" as being read on "the
day called that of the sun" (Sunday) alongside the "writings of the prophets." [9]

On 7 March 321, Constantine I, Rome's first Christian Emperor (see Constantine I and
Christianity), decreed that Sunday would be observed as the Roman day of rest: [10]
On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all
workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and
lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for
grain-sowing or vine-planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the
bounty of heaven should be lost.[11]

Despite the official adoption of Sunday as a day of rest by Constantine, the seven-day week and
the nundial cycle continued to be used side-by-side until at least the Calendar of 354 and
probably later.[12]

In 363, Canon 29 of the Council of Laodicea prohibited observance of the Jewish Sabbath
(Saturday), and encouraged Christians to work on the Saturday and rest on the Lord's Day
(Sunday).[13] The fact that the canon had to be issued at all is an indication that adoption of
Constantine's decree of 321 was still not universal, not even among Christians. It also indicates
that Jews were observing the Sabbath on the Saturday.

Modern practices[edit]

Some Christian denominations, called "Sabbatarians", observe a Saturday Sabbath. The name
"Sabbatarian" has also been claimed by Christians, especially Protestants, who believe Sunday
must be observed with just the sort of rigorous abstinence from work associated with "Shabbat".
Christians in the Seventh-day Adventist, Seventh Day Baptist, and Church of God (Seventh-Day)
denominations, as well as many Messianic Jews, have maintained the practice of abstaining from
work and gathering for worship on Saturdays (sunset to sunset) as did all of the followers of God
in the Bible.

For most Christians the custom and obligation of Sunday rest is not as strict. A minority of
Christians do not regard the day they attend church as important, so long as they attend. There is
considerable variation in the observance of Sabbath rituals and restrictions, but some cessation of
normal weekday activities is customary. Many Christians today observe Sunday as a day of
church-attendance.

In Roman Catholic liturgy, Sunday begins on Saturday evening. The evening Mass on Saturday
is liturgically a full Sunday Mass and fulfills the obligation of Sunday Mass attendance, and
Vespers (evening prayer) on Saturday night is liturgically "first Vespers" of the Sunday. The
same evening anticipation applies to other major solemnities and feasts, and is an echo of the
Jewish practice of starting the new day at sunset. Those who work in the medical field, in law
enforcement, and soldiers in a war zone are dispensed from the usual obligation to attend Church
on Sunday. They are encouraged to combine their work with attending religious services if
possible.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Sunday begins at the Little Entrance of Vespers (or All-Night
Vigil) on Saturday evening and runs until "Vouchsafe, O Lord" (after the "prokeimenon") of
Vespers on Sunday night. During this time, the dismissal at all services begin with the words,
"May Christ our True God, who rose from the dead ...." Anyone who wishes to receive Holy
Communion at Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning is required to attend Vespers the night before
(see Eucharistic discipline). Among Orthodox Christians, Sunday is considered to be a "Little
Pascha" (Easter), and because of the Paschal joy, the making of prostrations is forbidden, except
in certain circumstances. Leisure activities and idleness, being secular and offensive to Christ as
it is time-wasting, is prohibited[dubious – discuss].

Some languages lack separate words for "Saturday" and "Sabbath" (e. g. Italian, Portuguese).
Outside the English-speaking world, Sabbath as a word, if it is used, refers to the Saturday (or
the specific Jewish practices on it); Sunday is called the Lord's Day e. g. in Romance languages
and Modern Greek. On the other hand, English-speaking Christians often refer to the Sunday as
the Sabbath (other than Seventh-day Sabbatarians); a practice which, probably due to the
international connections and the Latin tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, is more
widespread among (but not limited to) Protestants. Quakers traditionally referred to Sunday as
"First Day" eschewing the pagan origin of the English name, while referring to Saturday as the
"Seventh day".[14]

The Russian word for Sunday is "Voskresenie," meaning "Resurrection day." The Greek word
for Sunday is "Kyriake" (the "Lord's Day"). The Czech, Polish, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian,
Ukrainian and Belarusian words for Sunday ("neděle," "niedziela," "nedelja", "nedjelja,"
"недеља", "неділя" and "нядзеля" respectively) can be translated as "without acts (no work)."

Common occurrences on Sunday[edit]

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Further information: Sunday shopping

In the United States and Canada, most government offices are closed on both Saturday and
Sunday. The practice of offices closing on Sunday in government and in some rural areas of the
United States stem from a system of blue laws. Blue laws were established in the early puritan
days which forbade secular activities on Sunday and were rigidly enforced. Some public
activities are still regulated by these blue laws in the 21st century. [15] In 1985 twenty-two states in
which religious fundamentalism remained strong maintained general restrictions on Sunday
behavior.[16] In Oklahoma, for example, it is stated: "Oklahoma's statutes state that "acts deemed
useless and serious interruptions of the repose and religious liberty of the community," such as
trades, manufacturing, mechanical employment, horse racing, and gaming are forbidden. Public
selling of commodities other than necessary foods and drinks, medicine, ice, and surgical and
burial equipment, and other necessities can legally be prohibited on Sunday. In Oklahoma a fine
not to exceed twenty-five dollars may be imposed on individuals for each offense." [16] Because of
these blue laws, many private sector retail businesses open later and close earlier on Sunday or
don't open at all.
Many countries, particularly in Europe such as Sweden, France, Germany and Belgium, but also
in other countries such as Peru, hold their national and local elections on a Sunday, either by law
or by tradition.

In media[edit]

Many American and British daily newspapers publish a larger edition on Sundays, which often
includes color comic strips, a magazine, and a coupon section; may only publish on a Sunday, or
may have a "sister-paper" with a different masthead that only publishes on a Sunday.

North American radio stations often play specialty radio shows such as Casey Kasem's
countdown or other nationally syndicated radio shows that may differ from their regular weekly
music patterns on Sunday morning or Sunday evening. In the United Kingdom, there is a Sunday
tradition of chart shows on BBC Radio 1 and commercial radio; this originates in the broadcast
of chart shows and other populist material on Sundays by Radio Luxembourg when the Reithian
BBC's Sunday output consisted largely of solemn and religious programmes. The first Sunday
chart show was broadcast on the Light Programme on 7 January 1962,[17] which was considered a
radical step at the time. BBC Radio 1's chart show moved to Fridays in July 2015 [18] but a chart
update on Sundays was launched in July 2019. [19]

Period or older-skewing television dramas, such as Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife, Lark Rise
to Candleford and Heartbeat are commonly shown on Sunday evenings in the UK; the first of
these was Dr Finlay's Casebook in the 1960s.[20] Similarly, Antiques Roadshow has been shown
on Sundays on BBC1 since 1979[21] and Last of the Summer Wine was shown on Sundays for
many years until it ended in 2010.[22] On Sunday nights, BBC Radio 2 plays music in styles it
once played most of the time but which are now rarely heard on the station, with presenters such
as Clare Teal[23] and Don Black.[24] Even younger-skewing media outlets sometimes skew older on
Sundays within the terms of their own audience; for example, BBC Radio 1Xtra is introducing
an "Old Skool Sunday" schedule in the autumn of 2019.[25]

Many American, Australian and British television networks and stations also broadcast their
political interview shows on Sunday mornings.