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 the "first day". This convention is also found in some Austronesian languages whose speakers were converted to Christianity by European missionaries. In Slavic languages, some of the names correspond to numerals after Sunday: compare Russian "vtornik" "Tuesday" and "vtoroj" "the following", "chetverg" "Thursday" and "chetvertyj" "the fourth", "pyatnitsa" "Friday" and "pyatyj" "the fifth"; see also the Notes. In Standard Chinese, the week is referred to as the cycle of the stars (). The modern Chinese names for the days of the week are based on a simple numerical sequence. The word for "week" (which is literally translated to "star day")