That the Teutonic nations received the names of the week-days from their Greek and Roman neighbors admits of no doubt. For commercial and military arrangements between Romans and Germans some kind of _lingua franca_ must soon have sprung up, and in it the names of the week-days must have found their place. There would have been little difficulty in explaining the meaning of Sun-day and Mon-day to the Germans, but in order to make them understand the meaning of the other names, some explanations must have been given on the nature of the different deities, in order to enable the Germans to find corresponding names in their own language. A Roman would tell his German friend that _dies Veneris_ meant the day of a goddess who represented beauty and love, and on hearing this the German would at once have thought of his own goddess of love, _Freyja_, and have called the _dies Veneris_ the day of _Freyja_ or Friday.(58) If _Jupiter_ was described as the god who wields the thunderbolt, his natural representative in German would be _Donar_,(59) the Anglo-Saxon _Thunar_, the Old Norse _Thor_; and hence the _dies Jovis_ would be called the day of _Thor_, or Thursday. If the fact that Jupiter was the king of the gods had been mentioned, his proper representative in German would, no doubt, have been _Wuotan_ or _Odin_.(60) As it was, _Wuotan_ or _Odin_ was chosen as the nearest approach to _Mercury_, the character which they share in common, and which led to their identification, being most likely their love of travelling through the air,(61) also their granting wealth and fulfilling the wishes of their worshippers, in which capacity Wuotan is known by the name of _Wunsch_(62) or _Wish_. We can thus understand how it happened that father and son changed places, for while _Mercurius_ is the son of _Jupiter_, _Wuotan_ is the father of _Donar_. _Mars_, the god of war, was identified with the German _Tiu_ or _Ziu_, a name which, though originally the same as _Zeus_ in Greek or _Dyaus_ in Sanskrit, took a peculiarly national character among the Germans, and became their god of war.(63) There remained thus only the _dies Saturni_, the day of Saturn, and whether this was called so in imitation of the Latin name, or after an old German deity of a similar name and character, is a point which for the present we must leave unsettled. What, however, is not unsettled is this, that if the Germans, in interpreting these names of Roman deities as well as they could, called the _dies Mercurii_, the same day which the Hindus had called the day of _Budha_ (with one _d_), their day of _Wuotan_, this was not because “the doctrines of the gentle ascetic existed in the bosom of Odin or his followers, while dwelling near the roots of the Caucasus,” but for very different and much more tangible reasons.