Saturday

Saturday is the sixth day of the ISO week and the first full day off for most people with an office job. It is the only English weekday still named after a Roman god.

That god is Saturn: Latin dies Saturni became Old English Sæternesdæg, and Dutch zaterdag kept him too. Most of Europe went another way and named the day after the Jewish Sabbath, which gives Spanish sábado, Italian sabato, Russian subbota and Polish sobota. German has two names, Samstag in the south and Sonnabend, "Sunday eve", in the north. Swedish lördag and Danish lørdag come from an Old Norse word for "washing day", which suggests the Vikings saved their weekly bath for Saturday.

For Jews the Shabbat runs from sunset on Friday to nightfall on Saturday, a day of rest set out in the book of Exodus, when lighting fires and doing business are off the table. Seventh-day Adventists, a Protestant church founded in the United States in 1863, also keep Saturday as their day of worship. Latvian and Lithuanian ignore all of this and just count: sestdiena and šeštadienis both mean "sixth day".

Entertainment claimed the evening. Saturday Night Live went on air on NBC on 11 October 1975 and turned a late slot into a career launch pad for comedians from Eddie Murphy to Tina Fey. Two years later John Travolta danced through Saturday Night Fever to a Bee Gees soundtrack. English football has its own Saturday rule: since the 1960s no match kicking off between 2:45 and 5:15 in the afternoon may be shown live on British television, so that fans go to their local ground instead of staying home. For a day without a job to do, Saturday keeps remarkably busy.