I suppose this could go in the Church in the Modern World sub-forum...




This thread is a spinoff of another one started by Matthew, where he
mentions domingo, the Spanish word for the Lord's Day, as being a word
that is used for "Sunday" all over Latin America and Spain, and various
other parts of the world, and is used in those places by everyone, even
those who are atheist or anti-Catholic or even anti-religious.  When they
say "Sunday" they have to say, "The Lord's Day," even if they do not
believe in The Lord.  I think this is a great topic, and deserves its own
thread.  But in doing a StartPage search, I quickly found it's even bigger
than I had thought...


Source thread

MaterDomini would be "mother of the Lord"
MaterDei would be "mother of God"

Dominicus = belonging to the Lord, a.k.a. "Dominic"
Dominici = 1st person genitive; "of Dominic"
mater = mother

Domingo is Spanish for Dominic -- it's also the name for Sunday, because it's "the Lord's (day)"

As an aside -- think about that: Spanish-speakers all over the world routinely call the first day of the week "The Lord's" instead of "Day of the Sun" like we English speakers. That goes for Spanish-speaking pagans, atheists, agnostics, you name it. The Catholic Faith is in their very language.

And of course there's "Adios" which means "A Dios" or "to God (with you)". The French have "Adieu" which means the same thing. I guess "Goodbye" could be a  shortening of "God (be) by you".

Anyhow, I'm getting off topic.

And I don't blame you for having the inclination to "go there" because it's
not a bad place to go, "ah-TALL" (as +Williamson is wont to say!).

See below for "Goodbye" stuff...



Spanish does seem to be the most influential language in this regard, that
more people are calling the first day of the week "the Lord's day" because
of Spanish than because of any other language.

But French and Vietnamese also call it the Lord's day, as does Portuguese.

French "Dimanche" is one of 2 days of the week with names attributable
to a religious derivation:

Dimanche - Dominicus (Lord)

Lundi - Lune (Moon)

Mardi - Mars

Mercredi - Mercure (Mercury)

Jeudi - Jupiter

Vendredi - Venus

Samedi - Sabbat (Sabbath)

(Source - Old Dec13-10, 10:35 PM    Re: Etymology of weekdays                 #2   Dr Lots-o'watts)


In looking around the Internet, I found a website that is most interesting
in regards to the culture of Vietnam as influenced by the Portuguese
Jesuit missionaries.  They helped the country to free itself from the grip
that Chinese culture had had on it previously.  Also, it touches on the
influence of Buddhism and now the growing international standard that
is attempting to wrest away from the days of the week any context of
the Lord's Day, or Domingo, being the FIRST DAY of the week.  In Vietnam,
Monday has been named "Second Day" for many centuries, followed by
"Third Day" for Tuesday, "Fourth Day" for Wednesday, "Fifth Day," and so
on, up to "Seventh Day" for Saturday.  

In other words, the work the Jesuits of old did to help the Vietnamese
emerge with their own written language and cultural identity, distinct
from China, is now under attack by the international push of ISO to revert
to the pre-Jesuit and pre-Portuguese and pre-Catholic influence in Vietnam.

The first time I heard the Rosary chanted by Vietnamese in St. Boniface
parish near Disneyland, CA, I immediately had no doubts what was the
real cause and dispute of the VietNam War.  The devil was attacking the
Church.  

When Vietnamese sing the Rosary, you have a hard time trying
to imagine that you are NOT presently in heaven!

And it made perfect sense to me that the devil would be very interested
in keeping people's attention AWAY from associating heavenly bliss with
the prayer of the Rosary, or anything to do with religion.  It would seem
that he wants us to associate any pleasures with temporal, material,
and even sinful things alone, not intellectual or willful love of God!  

Therein lies the real battle for souls.

For adherents of Eastern religions such as Buddhism, the reference to the God of the Christians was not so welcome. The solution? By reading the character 主 as chủ ('principal') instead of chúa ('Lord'), it was possible to play down the religious overtones of the name. Chúa nhật thus became chủ nhật, which has become the more common Vietnamese term for 'Sunday'. (Thanks to Nghiem Lang Thai for bringing this to my attention).

The Vietnamese system of naming the days of the week fits in perfectly with the traditional Western notion of Sunday as the first day of the week. Unfortunately for Portuguese and Vietnamese, however, the international trend is now to make Monday the first day of the week (Note 1: Is Monday the first day?). The International Standards Organisation (ISO) specifies that the week begins with Monday, a usage that is becoming more widespread, for instance in airline timetables. One recent Vietnamese dictionary (the Tư Điển Tiểng Việt), even goes out of its way to point out that thứ ba, the 'third day' or Tuesday, is really only the second day of the week!

Here is the link to the page:

Days of the Week in Vietnamese:
the Liturgical Calendar of the Catholic Church


It has an informative mention of feria from Portuguese and as applies to
Vietnam.

This curious usage is actually a faithful reflection of the liturgical week of the Roman Catholic Church, which takes Sunday as the 'Lord's Day' and uses the term feria for the weekdays. The term feria originally meant 'free days' in Latin, but later came to mean 'feast days'. Then, for some unknown reason, the term feria came to be applied to the days of the week, even though these are not actually 'feast days' at all (Note 11: The feria).

As it happens, there is one language in Europe that has an almost identical method of naming the days of the week, and that is Portuguese. The Portuguese days of the week are called feira, with Monday as the second feira, Tuesday as the third, etc. The word feira can also be omitted, thus segunda for Monday, terça for Tuesday, etc. The only point of difference from Vietnamese is that Portuguese uses sábado for Saturday.

Goodbye stuff:
(this is kind of off-topic really -- so it's off-topic of off-topic.)


The English "Goodbye" seems to be derived in part from "by and by"
which refers to the passage of time.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/goodbye

[Alteration (influenced by good day) of God be with you.]
Word History: No doubt more than one reader has wondered exactly how goodbye is derived from the phrase "God be with you." To understand this, it is helpful to see earlier forms of the expression, such as God be wy you, god b'w'y, godbwye, god buy' ye, and good-b'wy. The first word of the expression is now good and not God, for good replaced God by analogy with such expressions as good day, perhaps after people no longer had a clear idea of the original sense of the expression. A letter of 1573 written by Gabriel Harvey contains the first recorded use of goodbye: "To requite your gallonde [gallon] of godbwyes, I regive you a pottle of howdyes," recalling another contraction that is still used.
...
[contraction of God be with ye]

WARNING:  this is a Protestant song... I'm only putting it here to show
the use of the term "by and by" in the past few hundred years.  If anyone
knows whether this has been used in Protestant worship services, let
me know, for it seems to fit that usage, but I do not know for sure if it has
been used as such...
(I couldn't find an online recording to link to but for those interested
who have a piano and can play it, this might be of help):


In the Sweet Bye and Bye
(Samuel F. Bennett, and J. P. Webster, d. 1875)

There's a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.

cho: In the sweet (in the sweet)        ..........(in the score, above, the chorus
     By and by (by and by)                       seems to begin at "You will eat...")
     We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
     In the sweet (in the sweet)
     By and by (by and by)
     We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

We shall sing on that beautiful shore
The melodious songs of the blest,
And our spirits shall sorrow no more
Not a sigh for the blessing of rest.

  . . . . . . . .  (it seems to me the chorus goes here)

To our bountiful father above
We will offer our tribute of praise;
For the glorious gift of His love
And the blessings that hallow our days.



Willie Nelson had a cut on his Troublemaker album in 1976, "Sweet
Bye and Bye."  There is an online link to hear a sample of it.  He uses
the same tune that I posted above, with all the Willie add-ons.  It would
seem that he was recording a track of open-source or public domain
music that people would recognize as being from Sunday services, IMHO.
But now, all the top spots searching for "Bye and Bye" are
monopolized by the Bob Dylan song from 2001.

The first time I heard the Rosary chanted by Vietnamese in St. Boniface
parish near Disneyland, CA, I immediately had no doubts what was the
real cause and dispute of the VietNam War.  The devil was attacking the
Church.  

When Vietnamese sing the Rosary, you have a hard time trying
to imagine that you are NOT presently in heaven!

Thank you for this beautiful compliment.

Saint Theophane Venard had very similar remarks which are recorded in the book "A Modern Martyr", published by Angelus Press. He recorded that the sound of the native prayer and singing in church moved him more than the most complex harmonies of Western music.

One thing is for certain, Vietnamese faithful are very good at congregational vocal prayer.

In Spanish you say farewell as "adios", which means to God. I make a point to always use it, though you see less and less use of it now hearing instead things like bye-bye, ciao, hasta luego, nos vemos, depending on the country. Though all Spanish speaking countries use adios also.