Birth lore · Your birthday
Your birthday · Sun
Born on a Sunday
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
The name and its planet
The seven-day planetary week took shape in the Hellenistic and Roman world, where each day was placed under one of the seven visible "planets" in an order derived from astrology's planetary hours (see Zodiac and planets). Sunday was the dies Solis, the day of the Sun, a name kept in English Sunday, German Sonntag and Dutch zondag. In 321 the emperor Constantine made the "venerable day of the Sun" a day of rest. Christians, however, called it the Lord's Day, dies Dominica, because Jesus rose on the first day of the week; hence Italian domenica, Spanish domingo and French dimanche, while Russian voskresenye simply means "resurrection". In Hindi it is Ravivār, from Ravi, the Sun, and in Japanese Nichiyōbi, the "sun day". In Jewish and Islamic reckoning it is simply the first day.
Born on a Sunday
The English rhyme of "Monday's child", usually traced to the 1830s, gives the best fortune to the child born on the Sabbath day, meaning Sunday. In German a Sonntagskind, a "Sunday's child", is still a phrase for a lucky person, and Scandinavian and German folklore sometimes credited Sunday-born children with the gift of seeing spirits. Among the Akan of Ghana every child receives a day name: a boy born on Sunday (Kwasiada) is Kwasi or Akwasi, a girl Akosua. In Thailand each weekday has a colour and a posture of the Buddha; Sunday's colour is red, and its image shows the Buddha standing in contemplation of the Bodhi tree. Burmese astrology assigns the Sunday-born the mythical bird Garuda as their animal.
Lore and observance
As the day of the Sun, Sunday has been linked with gold, kingship and vitality in Western astrology, and in Vedic astrology with Surya. For most Christian churches it remains the day of worship and rest.