German words in old records · card D

Donnerstag

Donnerstag is German for Thursday, literally the day of the thunder god, just as English Thursday is named for Thor.

Donnerstag literally means thunder's day. It appears in written-out dates in civil records and in some church book entries that name the weekday of a birth, burial or wedding.

The word goes back to Old High German donarestag, the thunder god's day, and has close relatives in Dutch donderdag and Danish torsdag.

As seen in a recordBurial register of a German Lutheran parish, 1840s
Donnerstag den 2ten Juni 1842 begraben
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How to cite this page

Daily Ancestor. "Donnerstag." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/german/donnerstag. Last checked 2026-10-28.

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