Days of the week in German: Montag to Sonntag, IPA and spelling rules

Where the German weekday names come from

German took the Roman planetary week and translated it, god for god. The Duden traces Montag to Old High German mānetac, a loan translation of Latin dies Lunae, itself a translation of the Greek day of Selene. Sonntag goes back to Old High German sunnūn tag, the Latin dies Solis. Those two kept their heavenly bodies, as they did in English.

For the planets in between, the Germanic peoples put in their own gods. Donnerstag is the day of Donar, the thunder god, modelled on Iovis dies, Jupiter's day. Freitag belongs to Frija, the goddess equated with Venus. Dienstag is the least obvious: the Duden derives it from Middle Low German dingesdach, named after the sky god Ziu as protector of the Thing, the people's assembly, on the model of Martis dies. The southern dialect form Ziestag in older texts shows the god's name more plainly.

Wednesday is where German broke with its neighbours. English Wednesday and Dutch woensdag still honour Woden; German replaced Wodanstag with Mittwoch, mid-week, a loan translation of Church Latin media hebdomas. German Wikipedia's article on the day credits the change to Christian missionaries who wanted the heathen god out of the calendar, the same move that produced Icelandic miðvikudagur. The word was feminine at first, because it named the middle of the week, and only later became masculine like the other six.

Saturday has two names, and each comes from a different mission. Samstag, Old High German sambaztac, reaches back through a Vulgar Greek form to sábbaton, the sabbath. Sonnabend, Old High German sunnūnāband, copies Old English sunnanæfen, the eve before Sunday, and was carried by Anglo-Saxon missionaries into the north.

Capital letters, abbreviations and the lower-case montags

All German nouns take a capital letter, and the weekdays are nouns: am Montag, nächsten Dienstag, eines Freitags. All seven are masculine (der Montag) and form the plural with -e: die Montage, die Sonntage. Sonnabend is the exception again, with die Sonnabende.

The adverb is a different word and is written small. Montags, with a lower-case m and a final -s, means on Mondays, every week. The Duden gives unser Restaurant ist montags geschlossen as its example, and the rule appears in its spelling rules as D 70. The difference is visible in a timetable: am Montag is one particular Monday, montags is every Monday.

Times of day join the day into one word. Montagabend (Monday evening) and Dienstagnachmittag are single nouns with one capital; the adverb version is dienstagabends, or written apart, dienstags abends. The Duden accepts both forms of the adverb. Before früh the words stay apart: wir kommen Dienstag früh.

Abbreviations in running text take a full stop: Mo., Di., Mi., Do., Fr., Sa., So. Calendars and software set to German drop the stop, so Unicode CLDR, the locale data most phones and computers read, prints Mo, Di, Mi and so on. Samstag and Sonnabend share the abbreviation Sa.

Samstag or Sonnabend: which word for Saturday in German

Both words are standard German, and the choice depends on where the speaker grew up. The Duden marks Samstag as especially western, southern, Austrian and Swiss, and Sonnabend as regional, mainly northern and central German. A speaker from Hamburg, Berlin or Leipzig may say Sonnabend all their life, while Munich, Vienna and Zurich know only Samstag.

German Wikipedia notes that Sonnabend also appears in federal laws and in the laws of several states, and that usage has been moving towards Samstag. Learners can use Samstag everywhere and simply recognise Sonnabend when they read or hear it. The abbreviation Sa. covers both.

How to use the days of the week in German sentences

On a given day is am, the contraction of an dem: am Montag, am Wochenende. Leaving it out is common in speech for near days, as in wir sehen uns Freitag, but am is never wrong. For a habit, use the adverb: freitags gehe ich schwimmen.

Next and last go before the day without am: nächsten Montag, letzten Mittwoch. Ranges use von … bis: von Montag bis Freitag, and on signs simply Mo–Fr. A weekday is werktags, a weekday morning is werktags morgens, and the weekend is das Wochenende.

In a full date the day comes first, followed by a comma and the date in the dative or accusative. The Duden gives both heute ist Dienstag, der 9. Juni and am Dienstag, dem 9. Juni or den 9. Juni. The full date format of CLDR for German is Dienstag, 3. März 2026, with the ordinal dot after the day number.

The German week starts on Monday

The Duden defines Montag as the first day of the calendar week and numbers the rest from there: Mittwoch is the third day, Samstag the sixth. That matches ISO 8601, which German standards adopted, and CLDR records Monday as the first day for Germany, Austria and Switzerland alike. Week numbers (Kalenderwoche, KW) are part of everyday office German and follow the same rule.

The older count shows through in Mittwoch itself. A day can only be the middle of the week if the week runs from Sunday to Saturday, with Wednesday as the fourth of seven. German Wikipedia describes exactly that: third day by ISO count, fourth by the Jewish, Christian and Islamic count.

Regional German has its own forms. Swiss German, written as it is spoken, has Mändi, Zischtig and Mittwuch in many dialects, and the days of the week table gives Mandi, Zischdi, Mittwuch, Dunnerschdi, Fridi, Sàmschdi and Sunndi. Low German keeps Maandag, Dingsdag and Middeweken, close to Dutch. The Germanic word list sets German next to English, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages.