HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. PRESIDENT
Sitting imperiously at 12 o’clock, burning as brightly as Prometheus’s torch, cleverer than a Border Collie with spectacles, casting aside all martini-induced temporal miasma and capable of speaking 26 different languages, is the day of the week wheel in Rolex’s legendary, mythical Day- Date model. And of all the languages one might choose in which to read the day of the week, I’ve always had a romantic inclination towards French. Not just because I have a passable familiarity with the Gallic tongue (as well as a penchant for Gérard Depardieu movies), but because the language connects us with the origin of these names.
In any language, a symbol…
It goes back to between the first and third centuries B.C., when the Roman Empire decided to replace the eightday nundinal cycle with a pattern based on that used by the Etruscans in a sevenday week. Accordingly, they named the days of the week after the planets in Hellenistic astronomy, as follows: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. In French, which is Latin-based, the clear connection with these planets named for the Greek/Roman gods is clear: (in French, ‘Moon’ is ‘Lune’), and — with only deviating from a distinct reflection for ‘Lord’s day’.
