>>In Russian language Monday - "ponedel'nik" doesn't mean first.
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>It means "after Sunday", like in other Slavic languages. Funny though, in Hungarian, which has the words for Wednesday to Friday taken from Slavic languages, the word for Tuesday can be traced to the word for two, and the word for Monday is literally "seven main" or "week's main".

"Ponedel'nik". Assuming 'po' means after (in Russian "posle") it still doesn't translate into after Sunday. It has week as a part of the word, e.g. po ~ after, nedel' - week, ik - just a suffix.

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>>Saturday - "subbota" perhaps comes from Shabbath root,
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>That's pretty obvious, yes.
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>>and Sunday - "voskresen'e" again doesn't mean a number.
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>It means "resurrection", literally. Though in some other Slavic languages, the word for Sunday is "nedelja" - from "ne dela" = works not.

Interesting. I never thought about the etimology of nedelja (week).

>>The simplest and more logical way is in Hebrew:
>>Yom Rishon - Day 1 - Sunday
>>Yom Sheni - day two - Monday
>>Yom Shlishi - day three - Tuesday
>>Yom Ravii - day 4 - Wednesday
>>Yom Sheni - day 5 - Thursday
>>Yom Shishi - day 6 - Friday
>>Yom Shabbath - Saturday
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>It would have helped me if you had the words for numbers along. Can't ask at work, because they'd think I really want to learn Hebrew, and there'd be no end to it :).
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What exactly do you mean here? "Yom" means day. "Rishon" means first (one is "ahad"/"ahat" depending of the gender) Actually, numbers in Hebrew as all other words have genders (ever male or female or some words can only be used in plural, such as water, clouds, etc. - at least these words have plural ending).

Here is 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 as one, two, ... in Hebrew:

ahad
shtaim
shalosh
arbaa
hamesh
shesh
sheva
shmone
tesha
eser

(I'm not sure I used the correct letters to represent Hebrew sounds, because I know only few words in Hebrew and not a linguist as my husband)


>So it's logical in Hebrew, mostly logical in Slavic languages and Hungarian, and named after various gods in Romanic and Germanic languages. Now where did they get this glitch in standards, that one group of countries starts the week on Monday, and another on Saturday? I wish I knew.

I think it may come from religion. At least in Hebrew it does <g>