When first graders start to read, they begin with phonics, and advance to sounding out words. This approach works well for most words, but encounters difficulty when a silent letter stubbornly remains, like the weekly word, Wednesday. When sounded out, the result approaches “Wed – ness – day,” instead of the popular pronunciation “wens – day.” How can that be?

The origin of Wednesday stems from the ancient practice of naming days after gods or planetary objects. The Anglo-Saxons transformed the Norse god Odin into Woden (en.wikipedia.org/wednesday), who became the patron of our subject day. In olden times, the day was called Woden’s Day, from Old English, “wodensdaeg.” Middle English transformed the word to become “Wednesdei,” which came within one letter of our current Wednesday. For some inexplicable reason, the easy to pronounce “Woden’s Day” morphed into “Wodnesday.” Note the transposition of the letters “e” and “n.” – – perhaps a slip of the tongue or a scratch of the quill. The rationale for retaining the silent “d” remains a mystery; particularly when modern English is adept at shortening words through contractions and other machinations, as we will see.

To be sure, other weekday names dropped or changed a letter along the centuries, but remained mostly consistent in their pronunciation. Day of the sun, became Sunday; day of the Moon became Monday, dropping an “o”; Thor’s day became Thursday, exchanging the “o” for a “u”; Day of Saturn became Saturday, dropping an “n.” Tuesday and Friday encompass more complicated derivations, beyond the scope of this post.

In recent times, some well intended people have chosen to refer to Wednesday as “Hump Day,” suggesting that sometime during the Wednesday day, one moves over the hump toward the downward slide to a glorious weekend, two days off from the doldrums of work. Neither Odin nor Woden, would be pleased! But at least first graders can sound out “Hump Day” much easier. Nevertheless, the change disrupts the recognized normal pattern: Monday, Tuesday, Humpday . . . grates against one’s ear.

In the absence of a populist movement to “Strike the D” in Wednesday, perhaps a better alternative would be to “Say the D,” as “Wed – ness – day.” At least we would assist those poor little first graders and preserve what remains of Woden’s Day, possibly curtailing the ear-grating substitute, Humpday.