Sunday named after Sun
Etymology
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 Ἥλίου ημέρα" (Hēlíou hēméra).In most Indian languages, the word for Sunday is derived from Sanskrit Ravivāra or Adityavāra — vāra meaning day and Aditya and Ravi both being names for Surya, the Sun and the solar deity. Ravivāra is the first day cited in Jyotisha, which provides logical reason for giving the name of each week day. In the Thai solar calendar, 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” (that is, the day of a week which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ). In Old Russian, Sunday was also called неделя (nedelya), “free day”, or “day with no work”, but in the contemporary language this word means “week”.
The Modern Greek word for Sunday, Κυριακή, is derived from Κύριος (Kyrios, Lord) also, due to its liturgical significance as the day commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, i.e. The Lord's Day.
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 in Spanish and Portuguese, domingo.
In Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, Sunday is called 星期日 (Xīng qī rì), 일요일 (Il-yo-Il), and 日曜日 (Nichiyōbi) respectively, which all mean “sun day of the week”.
The Arabic word for Sunday is الأحد (Al-Ahad), meaning “the first”. It is usually combined with the word يوم (Yawm) meaning “day”.Sunday in Christianity
Pagan correspondence
In Roman culture, Sunday was the day of the Sun god. In pagan theology, the Sun was the 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.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." (This is a reference to Malachi 4:2.)A similar consideration may have influenced the choice of the date of Christmas as the day of the winter solstice, whose celebration was part of the Roman cult of the Sun. 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."
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