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Comment by stardek | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious where you're from that Sunday isn't considered the first day of the week? I know Monday is often treated as such since it follows the "week end" but (in my very limited experience) I've never actually seen anything claiming that Monday is actually first.

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Monday is first in Britain, which makes for annoying Web ui when the site isn't localised properly (and it's easy to leave it in en_US and not realise the problem).

I once booked a flight on the wrong day because part way through the booking process the first day of the week in the calendar changed.

Nursery rhymes with this order: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monday%27s_Child http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Grundy

Chinese use 星期一 / "weekday one" for Monday.

Thank you for this! I NEVER knew this was something that could/would be different too. But I will have to keep that in mind if I ever store a wday value; or i guess even present a calendar! wow.

> Chinese use 星期一 / "weekday one" for Monday.

Well... it's true that Chinese generally consider Monday the beginning of the week, but that's not evidence. The days of the week are 一 (1)、二 (2)、三 (3)、四 (4)、五 (5)、六 (6) and 天 or 日 (day). Does day come before 1 or after 6 when you count?

edit: the map lower down in the thread ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#/media/File:First_Day_of_... ) shows China as beginning its week on Sunday. That does not agree with my experience, or with the Chinese people I've asked this question of.

> Chinese use 星期一 / "weekday one" for Monday.

Sure, Monday through Saturday are numbered 1 to 6, but Sunday is "weekday Sky" or "weekday Heaven", which is considered to come before "weekday one".[1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#/media/File:First_Day_of_...

So days_of_week[0] is actually Sunday. Assuming a zero based index.

Portuguese uses ordinal numbers to name days from Monday to Friday, starting from Sunday: Monday is segunda-feria (second day), Tuesday is terça-feria (third day), all the way to Friday, or sexta-feria (sixth day).

Interestingly, there's no first day: Saturday and Sunday are sábado and domingo, respectively.

A couple points:

- That map is factually incorrect. Sunday is considered the end of the week in China, not the beginning. I note in passing that the image file is attributed to "own work" -- we all make mistakes.

- The 天 of 星期天 doesn't have the sense of "sky"　or "heaven". It has the sense (well, originally had the sense) of "day", the unit of time. Compare 天天 "every day"; 今天 "today"; 明天 "tomorrow". We know that this is the original sense because the name descends from the Christian term 礼拜天 "the day of worship". Consider also that 周天 alternates with 周日, and while 日 shares the sense "day" it does not share the sense "sky".

I'm from Romania, and Monday is the first day of the week here.

When we hear that in other countries Sunday is considered the first day of the week, sounds almost as weird as being told that they consider "z" to be the first letter of the alphabet.

Also, it is very frustrating when a UI uses Sunday as the first day of the week, and I encounter that quite often.

"Weird" is in the eye of the beholder. As someone who grew up with Sunday always being considered the first day of the week, I find it weird to see places where day one is Monday.

tl;dr You're weird! No, you're weird!

Is it frustrating, though? I've seen it start on both days many times but it's never been frustrating, despite one being clearly different from what I've learned all my life.

Well, when I try to get something done in a calendar, having to do that remapping of the beginning and end of the weeks mentally... it gets in the way.

I'm from Canada, and it's probably because of all the US calendars we tend to get, but I'm used to Sunday being the first day on the calendar while mentally, I consider Monday the first day of the week. So I plan things where "next week" means "after Sunday" but I'm used to seeing weekend days bordering the weekdays on a month-long calendar. I tend to think Sunday = 0 also. It's kind of like metric vs. imperial. Canadians never did fully switch over, e.g. for weight, height or indoor thermostats (for some folks).

Every European calendar I've ever seen starts the week on Monday.

Yah, it's pretty much a European thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#/media/File:First_Day_of_...

Boom. Great link. End of thread right there.

Google's places API has the days numbered sunday : 0 through to saturday : 6 so I guess the US system has moved in to API land.

That map has a glaring error -- China counts Monday as the first day of the week, not Sunday.

According to the cousin comment by thaumasiotes, this is not true. It's just that Sunday comes "before" Monday, which is called day 1.

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9674622)

I feel safe in claiming that I speak for thaumasiotes when I say I didn't mean it that way.

> it's true that Chinese generally consider Monday the beginning of the week

My cousin comment responds to the claim that you can tell China begins the week on Monday because its name is "week one", 星期一. That claim is problematic; China does begin the week on Monday, but the name doesn't prove so.

> I feel safe in claiming that I speak for thaumasiotes when I say I didn't mean it that way.

oops!

In Muslim countries it's predominantly Saturday. Correct me if I am wrong.

I was taught that Monday was the first day of the week in preschool here in the US. Looking back maybe it was some rogue teacher, but it always stuck.

Monday is the first day.

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