CHAT: Ancient Planet Names

This is interesting to me.  I understand that the days of the week are
named after the planets which ruled the hours of dawn.  (There being
precisely 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night in every day in
pre-clock times, since that was the definition of what an "hour" was,
then if you go through the seven planets in order of increasing speed
of motion, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, and
assign them to hours, you will find that since 24 hours divided by 7
planets has a remainder of 3, the hour assigned to Dawn advances three
places through the list every day...  SUN ven. mer. MOON sat. jup.
MARS.... = Sun's day, Moon's day, Mars's day... And so we get our
seven days of the week.)

That much I know.  And I know that this system was commonplace and
well known in the Roman Empire; but I have no idea whether and how far
it pre-dates them.  The fact that the Hebrew names of the planets are
bound up with this system of numbering, so that Saturn is named after
the Sabbath, makes me think it is probably more culturally diffused
than I realized!

Anyone have detailed information on how this all worked and how we
know how it all worked?

Ray?

Ed Heil ------------------------------- edheil@postmark.net
"Facts are meaningless! You can use facts to prove anything
   that's even _remotely_ true!"           -- Homer Simpson

Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Jul 1999 05:14:21 GMT Herman Miller <hmiller@...> writes:
> >Do other languages (natural or otherwise) tend to
> >borrow
> >the same star names, or have their own names for the stars? I'm trying
> >to
> >decide whether Tirelat should borrow the English star names or come up
> >with
> >names (and mythologies?) especially designed for Tirelat.
>
> >   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no
>
>
> Well, the Rokbeigalm, being seafaring nomads, probably have their own
> names for many stars and constellations, but i haven't figured them out
> yet.  :)  .  Although they call the North Star _gamnuh-a sudnihmwe-a_,
> "the Unmoving Star".
>
> In Natlangs, i don't know about the stars, but Hebrew uses mostly its own
> words for planets:
> Mercury = Shaliahh ("messenger")
> Venus = Nogah ("brilliance")
> Earth = Eretz ("earth"; when talking about the planet you use _kadur
> ha'aretz_, "planet earth")
> Mars = Ma'adim ("reddener")
> Jupiter = Tzedeq ("righteousness")
> Saturn = Shabtai ("of the Sabbath", as in 'seventh')
>
> the rest of the planets that were discovered more recently just have
> Hebraicized versions of the Latin names.
>
>
> -Stephen (Steg)
>
>
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