How Monday got its name

The English name for Monday comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Mōnandæg, which loosely
means “the moon’s day.” Mōna is the word for moon in Old English.

The second day of the week has been classified as the moon’s day since Babylonian
times. The Babylonians were the ones who decided on a seven-day week, and they
named five of the days for planets, and one each for the sun and for the moon.

Ancient Romans followed the same pattern, though they technically thought they were
naming every day after a planet, since the Romans thought that the sun and moon
were planets in their own right. For the Romans, every planet had an associated god
or goddess, and Luna was the goddess that personified the moon.

You can see the Ancient Roman influence in the name for Monday in Latin (dies
lunae, or “day of the moon”) and the romance languages (lunes in Spanish, lundi in
French, and lunedi in Italian).