Day of the week
Saturday
“Saturday's child works hard for a living.”
Named for Saturn: dies Saturni.
The line above is Saturday's from “Monday's Child” as it is usually printed today, as given in Iona and Peter Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951).
The rhyme was first printed by A. E. Bray in A Description of the Part of Devonshire Bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy (1836), and is older than that in speech. Her line for Saturday reads: “Saturday's child works hard for its living;”
This is folklore recorded from oral tradition, not a claim about anyone born on a Saturday.
Where the name comes from
The Old English names were sæterdæg and sæternesdæg, literally the day of the planet Saturn. It is a partial loan-translation of the Latin Saturni dies, Saturn's day, and it is the odd one out in the English week: unlike the other English day names, it had no Germanic substitution. Tuesday to Friday took Germanic gods in place of Roman ones, and Sunday and Monday put the sun and the moon into English words, but Saturday kept the Roman name itself. Dutch Zaterdag and Old Frisian Saterdi are the same name, while the Scandinavian languages have another: Old Norse laugardagr, Danish lørdag and Swedish lördag, literally bath day. German Samstag appears to come from a colloquial Greek form of sabbaton, the sabbath.
Word history from the Online Etymology Dictionary's entry for Saturday.
Which dates are a Saturday in 2026
52 dates fall on a Saturday in 2026.