Week: Difference between revisions

In many languages, the '''days of the week''' [[names of the days of the week|are named]] after [[classical planets]] or gods of a [[Pantheon (religion)|pantheon]]. In English, the names are [[Monday]], [[Tuesday]], [[Wednesday]], [[Thursday]], [[Friday]], [[Saturday]] and [[Sunday]], then returning to [[Monday]]. Such a week may be called a ''planetary week''.{{citation needed|date=April 2020}} This arrangement is similar to a week in the [[New Testament]] in which the seven days are simply numbered with the first day being a Christian day of worship (aligned with Sunday, offset from [[ISO 8601]] by one day) and the seventh day being a sabbath day (SaturdaySunday).

While, for example, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan and other countries consider SundaySaturday as the first day of the week, and while the week begins with Saturday in much of the Middle East, the international [[ISO 8601]] standard{{efn|"ISO 8601 Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times" is an international standard covering the exchange of date- and time-related data.}} and most of Europe has Monday as the first day of the week. The ISO standard includes the [[ISO week date]] system, a numbering system for weeks within a given year, where each week starting on a Monday is associated with the year that contains that week's Thursday (so that if a year starts in a long weekend Friday–Sunday, week number one of the year will start after that, and if, conversely, a year ends on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, the last days of the year are counted as part of week 1 of the following year). ISO 8601 assigns numbers to the days of the week, running from 1 for Monday through 7 for Sunday.