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")
Eight-day week a day. Further, they also counted the ending night period, giving rise to periods of time with more nights than days. In Irish, the term "nómad" is used to signify a small number of days and is exactly the length of the nine night week as in "co cend nomaide" - a period of time with nine nights bracketing eight days. The nine nights divided nicely into a sidereal month of 27 nights. In Welsh a similar word "wythnos" meaning "a week" literally means "an eight-night" since it started and ended with a period of night bracketing seven days. Similarly