Wednesday "Germanic Mercury". The Latin name dates to the late 2nd or early 3rd century. It is a calque of Greek ("heméra Hérmou"), a term first attested, together with the system of naming the seven weekdays after the seven classical planets, in the "Anthologiarum" by Vettius Valens (c. AD 170). The Latin name is reflected directly in the weekday name in most modern Romance languages: "Mércuris" (Sardinian), "mercredi" (French), "mercoledì" (Italian), "miércoles" (Spanish), "miercuri" (Romanian), "dimecres" (Catalan), "Marcuri" or "Mercuri" (Corsican). In Welsh it is Dydd Mercher, meaning Mercury's Day. The German name for the day, "Mittwoch" (literally: "mid-week"), replaced the
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),