Days of the Week in Chinese: Three Different Words for 'Week'

Chinese (Mandarin) currently has three sets of names for the days of the week. All are based on a simple numerical sequence.

Standard naming

The standard naming as taught to foreign learners and officially favoured in China itself is based on the word 星期 xīngqī 'week', with the days ranged in a numerical sequence. The word 星期 xīngqī literally means 'star period'.

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
星期日 or 星期天	星期一	星期二	星期三	星期四	星期五	星期六
xīngqīrì xīngqītiān	xīngqīyī	xīngqī'èr	xīngqīsān	xīngqīsì	xīngqīwǔ	xīngqīliù
'week day'	'week one'	'week two'	'week three'	'week four'	'week five'	'week six'

In naming the days of the week, 星期 is followed by a number indicating the day: 'Monday' is literally 'week one', 'Tuesday' is 'week two', 'Wednesday' is 'week three', etc. The exception is Sunday, where 天 tiān or 日 rì both meaning 'day' (日 rì is somewhat more formal than 天 tiān) are used instead of a number. 'Sunday' thus literally means 'week day'.

(Note that, although 星期 xīngqī has been standardised as xīngqī in Mainland China, the older colloquial pronunciation xīngqí is preserved on Taiwan. To hear how these names are pronounced, listen to these videos on Youtube: A — B — C, all somewhat overarticulated. Two videos, D and E, feature the Taiwanese Mandarin pronunciation as well as other names for days of the week, as outlined later in this page.)

This naming has three interesting features:

• The word for 'week', 星期 xīngqī, is a mysterious term literally meaning 'star period'.
• Sunday is known by the almost meaningless name of 'week day' (or 'star period day').
• The numbering of days proceeds from Monday as the first day.

Original naming

In order to understand the origins of this naming, we need to look at another set of Chinese names for the days of the week, one that is not officially encouraged but is in widespread use, based on another Chinese term for the week, 禮拜 lǐbài (礼拜 in its simplified form). The original meaning of 禮拜 / 礼拜 lǐbài is 'worship'. This naming goes:

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
禮拜日 or 禮拜天	禮拜一	禮拜二	禮拜三	禮拜四	禮拜五	禮拜六
礼拜日 礼拜天	礼拜一	礼拜二	礼拜三	礼拜四	礼拜五	礼拜六
lǐbàirì lǐbàitiān	lǐbàiyī	lǐbài'èr	lǐbàisān	lǐbàisì	lǐbàiwǔ	lǐbàiliù
'worship day'	'worship one'	'worship two'	'worship three'	'worship four'	'worship five'	'worship six'

(To hear the pronunciation, listen to the You Tube videos D and E.)

Substituting 'worship' for 'star period' reveals the logic of the naming. Notably, Sunday changes from the meaningless 'week day' into 'day of worship', providing a valuable clue to the origin of the naming. The use of 禮拜 lǐbài / 礼拜 for the week is intimately related to the process whereby the Western-style week came into China.

Before they adopted the Western-style week, the Chinese used a ten-day cycle known as a 旬 xún in ordering their daily lives and activities. Although the Christian week was not unknown (it was known, for instance, from contact with the Jesuits in the 16th-18th centuries), the seven-day week as we know it first became widely familiar in the 19th century with the coming of traders and missionaries from Western powers (Note: Christian missionaries in China).

The term 禮拜 lǐbài / 礼拜 in the sense of 'week' first appeared in writing in 1828 and is likely of dialectal origin. A dictionary of Cantonese colloquialisms from that year, entitled 廣東省土話字彙 Guǎngdōng-shěng Tǔhuà Zìhuì 'Guangdong province colloquial vocabulary', gave 禮拜 as the equivalent of 'week' in English.

禮拜 / 礼拜 lǐbài as a verb normally refers to worship as practised in the Christian and Muslim faiths. Its extension to mean 'week' appears to be due to local Chinese noticing that the Westerners worshipped every seven days. However, the specific mechanism by which this extension of meaning came about, and how the system of numbering the individual days developed, is not clear. It seems likely that the other days of the week were numbered off in sequence after the day of worship (Monday = 'day of worship plus one', Tuesday = 'day of worship plus two', etc').

Advent of the official naming

While 禮拜 lǐbài 'worship' was the most common word for 'week' (and remained so right up until the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949), it failed to find favour with literate Chinese for obvious reasons. Not only was it associated with Western imperialism and a foreign religion, it was likely seen as 'inappropriate' or 'plebeian' by the literate elite, whose focus was on classical Chinese and the written word.

The term 星期 xīngqī 'star period' in the sense of 'week' was first attested in print in 1889. 星期 xīngqī was originally an old term for the 'Star Festival' (or 七夕 qīxī), China's equivalent of Valentine's Day, which falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. The repurposing of 星期 xīngqī 'star period' to mean 'week' was clearly influenced by the planetary names, in particular the old system of planetary names that had been introduced into China over a millennium earlier by the Buddhists. (Note: Is 'xingqi' a modern coinage?)

Buddhist translators in the first millennium had created a set of names based on the nomenclature of the seven 'planets' — the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn — using the terminology of the 'seven luminaries' or 七曜 qīyào. The 七曜, like the 'seven planets', referred to the Sun, the Moon, and the five visible planets:

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
日曜日	月曜日	火曜日	水曜日	木曜日	金曜日	土曜日
rìyào-rì	yuèyào-rì	huǒyàorì	shuǐyào-rì	mùyào-rì	jīnyào-rì	tǔyào-rì
'sun luminary day'	'moon luminary day'	'fire (Mars) luminary day'	'water (Mercury) luminary day'	'wood (Jupiter) luminary day'	'metal/ gold (Venus) luminary day'	'earth (Saturn) luminary day'

The story of how these names came to China, and then Japan, is told at Japanese days of the week. These names were still known in China during the Qing dynasty and appear to be the inspiration for adopting the term 星期 xīngqī.

When the adoption of the Western week was announced after the fall of the Qing dynasty in the government gazette of 10 February 1912, the term used was 星期 xīngqī. This was allegedly due to the support of the outstanding scholar 袁嘉谷 Yuán Jiāgǔ, who is remembered for setting up a government department to supervise terminology in textbooks in 1909. 星期 xīngqī went on to gradually gain in popularity, especially after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

The adoption of 星期 xīngqī instead of 禮拜 / 礼拜 lǐbài did not involve a radical change; it simply substituted one word for 'week' with another. The original numbering system of 禮拜 lǐbài remained intact. The main difference was the substitution of the meaningless term 星期日 xīngqīrì or 星期天 xīngqītiān 'star cycle day' for 禮拜天 lǐbàitiān 'day of worship'.

Modern alternative naming

Given that the officially preferred naming involved nothing more than the substitution of one word for another, it is ironic that a third word for week has in recent times been making heavy inroads into the territory of 星期 xīngqī. This is the word 週 / zhōu (simplified form 周), literally meaning 'cycle', which has given rise to a third set of names for days of the week:

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
週日	週一	週二	週三	週四	週五	週六
周日	周一	周二	周三	周四	周五	周六
zhōurì	zhōuyī	zhōu'èr	zhōusān	zhōusì	zhōuwǔ	zhōuliù
'cycle day'	'cycle one'	'cycle two'	'cycle three'	'cycle four'	'cycle five'	'cycle six'

(To hear the pronunciation, listen to the You Tube videos mentioned above: D and E.)

The use of 週 / 周 zhōu to mean 'week' appears to have entered Chinese from Japanese, probably around the turn of the 20th century. The earliest written references are from 1901 and 1903. The Japanese word 週 shū 'week' is itself of Chinese origin, having the meaning 'cycle'. The word fits quite naturally into Chinese and people are unconscious of its Japanese pedigree. One reason for the growing popularity of 週 / 周 zhōu, especially among the educated urban classes, is the fact that it consists of only one syllable. Each day of the week becomes a comfortable two-character compound of the type favoured in Chinese.

As a result, Chinese now has three sets of names for the days of the week, based on three different words for 'week':

• The official term is 星期 xīngqī 'star period', purportedly derived from the ancient Chinese seven-day planetary cycle.
• 禮拜 / 礼拜 lǐbài meaning 'worship' is a common term for 'week' in everyday speech.
• 週 / 周 zhōu meaning 'cycle' is a slightly more formal term that is gaining ground as a compact alternative to the other two.

While most days of the week have three possible names, Sunday has five due to the use of two words for 'day', 天 tiān or 日 rì.

All three sets of names can be heard in daily conversation, at times alternating in the speech of the same person. 星期 xīngqī is the 'officially correct' term that is taught to foreign learners of Chinese. On the Mainland, 星期 xīngqī and 週 zhōu are the only forms acceptable in normal Chinese prose, in official announcements, and in other situations where 'standard Chinese' is required. When TV programs use subtitles to transcribe interviews with ordinary speakers, 星期 xīngqī is commonly substituted where the speaker actually said 礼拜 lǐbài.

In contrast, 禮拜 / 礼拜 lǐbài is very common in informal conversation. It is said to be more popular in dialects in the south of China — some southern dialects use only the cognate of 禮拜 lǐbài — and 星期 xīngqī is said to be more popular in the north. Whether this is true or not, 礼拜 lǐbài is in widespread use throughout China and Taiwan. Interestingly Cantonese speakers speaking Mandarin may consciously use 星期 xīngqī as the 'correct' Mandarin form, in preference to the 禮拜 / 礼拜 of their own dialect.

Taiwan is less rigid in standardising 星期. Not only is 禮拜 lǐbài commonly used in speech, it is also found in writing. An example can be found in the translation of Harry Potter into Chinese, where the Mainland versions stick to 星期 xīngqī whereas the Taiwanese translation uses both.

Other namings

In addition to the three current naming styles, historically Chinese has had two other systems of naming.

One was the original planetary system that we noted above, based on the seven luminaries. Although the Chinese of the 19th century, with their prodigious written tradition, were still aware of the 'seven luminaries' nomenclature, unlike in Japan it never caught on as a way of naming the days of the Western-style week. Allegedly, the scholar 袁嘉谷 Yuán Jiāgǔ decided against them because they were tongue-twisters in Mandarin, especially names like 日曜日 rì yào rì. The planetary names enjoyed some currency during the period of Japanese aggression against China, having been attested to in school timetables of the 1920s or 1930s. However, they never came into wide usage and were perhaps too closely associated with Japanese imperialism to be palatable to most Chinese.

A second system was used at one stage by Chinese Catholics in accordance with the favoured naming of the Catholic church. (I have been unable to confirm whether this nomenclature dates from the time the Jesuits were active in China in the 16-18th centuries or is a later development).

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
主日	瞻禮二	瞻禮三	瞻禮四	瞻禮五	瞻禮六	瞻禮七
主日	瞻礼二	瞻礼三	瞻礼四	瞻礼五	瞻礼六	瞻礼七
zhǔrì	zhānlǐ-èr	zhānlǐ-sān	zhānlǐ-sì	zhānlǐ-wǔ	zhānlǐ-liù	zhānlǐ-qī
'Lord day'	'observe-ritual two'	'observe-ritual three'	'observe-ritual four'	'observe-ritual five'	'observe-ritual six'	'observe-ritual seven'

These names are based on the word 瞻禮 zhānlǐ ('observe-ritual', simplified 瞻礼). In Chinese, 瞻禮 / 瞻礼 zhānlǐ is used both for observances of the Buddhist religion and for 'feasts' of the Catholic calendar, such as the Assumption, Easter, the Pentecost, etc.

Both the numbering (with Monday as the second day) and the use of a term referring to 'feast-days' is a faithful reflection of the liturgical week of the Roman Catholic Church, which takes Sunday as the 'Lord's Day' and then numbers the weekdays as 'feast-days' or feria, Monday being the second feria, Tuesday the third, Wednesday the fourth, etc. The term feria originally meant 'free days' in Latin, but later came to mean 'feast days' and then, for some unknown reason, came to be applied to the days of the week (Note: The feria). This system of naming was adopted by the Vietnamese but does not appear to have been seriously entertained in China.

I would particularly like to acknowledge my debt to The Origin of names of days of the week in Chinese (in Chinese) for allowing me to add considerable additional information to the above account.

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