Eight-day week a fortnight "pythefnos" means "a fifteen night". Eight-day week Some historical calendars had "weeks" of eight days. In the Burmese version of Theravada Buddhism, the week has eight days. Wednesday is divided into Wednesday proper (midnight to noon) and Rahu (noon to midnight). Each day is associated with a compass direction, a planet, and a totem animal. The ancient Etruscans developed an eight-day market week known as the nundinum around the 8th or 7th century BC. This was passed on to the Romans no later than the 6th century BC. As Rome expanded, it encountered the seven-day week and for
Names of the days of the week of the week closely parallels that of the Latin system and is ordered after the "Seven Luminaries" (七曜 "qī yào"), which consists of the Sun, Moon and the five planets visible to the naked eye. The Chinese seem to have adopted the seven-day week from the Hellenistic system by the 4th century, although by which route is not entirely clear. It was again transmitted to China in the 8th century by Manichaeans, via the country of Kang (a Central Asian polity near Samarkand). The 4th-century date, according to the "Cihai" encyclopedia, is due to a reference to Fan Ning (範寧/范宁),