On this page you’ll find the names of the days of the week in Spanish, some tips on how to use them, and some interesting facts about their etymologies.
Spanish days of the week
- Lunes – Monday
- Martes – Tuesday
- Miércoles – Wednesday
- Jueves – Thursday
- Viernes – Friday
- Sábado – Saturday
- Domingo – Sunday
Some related vocabulary
- Semana – Week
- Día – Day
- Hoy – Today
- Ayer – Yesterday
- Mañana – Tomorrow
- Pasado mañana – The day after tomorrow
How to talk about the days of the week in Spanish
Here are some important rules to remember when talking about the days of the week, with example sentences to demonstrate each point.
1. Days of the week are masculine
This means that you use the masculine articles el (“the” singular) and los (“the” plural) when talking about days of the week.
Example with el: El lunes empiezo un nuevo trabajo. – On Monday I start a new job.
Example with los: Los viernes salimos a bailar. – On Fridays we go out dancing.
2. How to say “on [day]” or “on [days]”
As you might have noticed in the examples above, if you want to refer to something happening on a particular day, you would use the article el plus the day of the week. For example, voy el sábado would translate as “I’m going on Saturday”.
If you want to refer to a repeated action that you do every week, you would use the plural article los with the plural form of the name of the day of the week. For example, voy los sábados would translate as “I go on Saturdays”, implying that it’s something you do every Saturday. You could make this even more explicit by saying voy todos los sábados (“I go every Saturday”).
3. Days of the week aren’t capitalized
Unlike in English, the days of the week in Spanish aren’t capitalized, so you write lunes, martes and so on, rather than Lunes and Martes.
The etymology of Spanish days of the week compared to English
The Spanish words of the days of the week come from Latin, and most originally referred to Roman deities. The corresponding English words come from Old English, a Germanic language that was quite different to Latin. However, it’s thought that the Old English days of the week were named by translating the Latin words into Old English and replacing the Roman gods with their closest Germanic equivalents in a practice scholars refer to as interpretatio germanica, or “Germanic interpretation”. This means that if you look into the etymology of the English and Spanish words for the days of the week, you will find a lot of parallels.
Lunes – Monday
Spanish lunes comes from Latin dies Lunae, meaning “day of the moon”. English “Monday” also originally meant literally “Moon-day”.
Martes – Tuesday
Spanish martes comes from Latin dies Martis, meaning “day of Mars”. English “Tuesday” originally meant “Tiw’s day”. Tiw (or Týr in Old Norse) was the god of war in ancient Germanic mythology, and was roughly equivalent to Mars in Roman mythology.
Miércoles – Wednesday
Spanish miércoles comes from Latin dies Mercŭri, meaning “day of Mercury”. English “Wednesday” originally meant “Woden’s day”, referring to the god Woden or Odin. Woden and Mercury weren’t completely equivalent, but they had several things in common. They were both gods of wisdom and knowledge who were associated with travel and were psychopomps, meaning they transported souls to the afterlife.
Jueves – Thursday
Spanish jueves comes from Latin dies Iovis, meaning “day of Jupiter”. The English word “Thursday” meant “Thor’s day”, referring to the god Thor. The Germanic god Thor was equated with the Roman god Jupiter since both were gods of the sky and thunder.
Viernes – Friday
Spanish viernes comes from Latin dies Venĕris, meaning “day of Venus”. The English word “Friday” meant “Frigga’s day”. Both Venus and the goddess Frigga were goddesses of love.
Sábado – Saturday
Spanish sábado comes from late Latin sabbătum, which ultimately derived from Hebrew shabbath, or “sabbath” (“day of rest”). This word entered Latin with the arrivial of Christianity, replacing the earlier name dies Saturni (“day of Saturn”). Interestingly, English “Saturday” also means “day of Saturn”. This is the one day of the week where the Roman god Saturn wasn’t translated into a Germanic equivalent, perhaps because there was no clear equivalent of Saturn.
Domingo – Sunday
Spanish domingo comes from late Latin dies dominĭcus, meaning “day of the Lord”. English “Sunday” equates to the earlier Latin name dies Solis, meaning “day of the Sun”. As you can see, the Spanish words for Saturday and Sunday come from later Christianized Latin names, whereas the English words didn’t change with the arrival of Christianity.
