The English noun Monday derived sometime before 1200 from monedæi, which itself developed from Old English (around 1000) mōnandæg and mōndæg (literally meaning "moon's day"), which is cognate to other Germanic languages, including Old Frisian mōnadeig, Middle Low German and Middle Dutch mānendach (modern Dutch Maandag), Old High German mānetag (modern German Montag), and Old Norse mánadagr (Swedish and Norwegian nynorsk måndag, Icelandic mánudagur. Danish and Norwegian bokmål mandag). The Germanic term is a Germanic interpretation of Latin lunae dies ("day of the moon").
In most Indic languages, the word for Monday is derived from Sanskrit Sōmavāra.Soma is another name of the Moon god in Hinduism. In Indic languages it is also called Chandravāra, Chandra in Sanskrit means moon. In Thailand the day is called "Wan Jan" meaning, the day of the Moon god Chandra".
In many Slavic languages the name of the day eschews pagan tradition and translates as "after Sunday/holiday". Russian понедельник (poniediélnik), Serbian понедељак (ponedeljak), Bulgarian понеделник (ponedelnik), Polish poniedzialek, Czech pondělí. In Turkish it is called pazartesi, which means the day after Sunday. Japanese and Korean share the same ancient Chinese words '月曜日' (Hiragana:げつようび, Hangul:월요일) for Monday which means day of the moon.
英语名词Monday产生于公元1200年以前,源于monedæi.Monedæi这个词从古英语（约1000年）mōnandæg 和 mōndæg（直译为“月亮之日”）中发展而来,而mōnandæg 和 mōndæg又和其他日耳曼语汇同源,包括古弗里斯兰语mōnadeig,中东低地德语和中东荷兰语（现代荷兰语Maandag）,旧高德语mānetag（现代德语Montag）,和老扎语mánadagr（瑞典和挪威尼诺斯克语måndag,冰岛语mánudagur,丹麦和挪威语bokmål mandag）.日耳曼语的“星期一”是对拉丁语lunae dies的解释（“月亮之日”）.
在许多印度语言中,“星期一”这个词产生于梵文Sōmavāra.在印度教中,月亮之神的另一个名字是Soma,而印度语言又把它称作Chandravāra,Chandra在梵语中的意思是“月亮”.在泰国,这天被称作Wan Jan,意为月亮之神Chandra之日.
在许多斯拉夫语言中“星期一”的名称避开了异教传统,被译为“星期天/假日后的那天”.“星期一”的俄语为понедельник（poniediélnik）,塞尔维亚语为понедељак （ponedeljak）,保加利亚语为понеделник（ponedelnik）,波兰语为poniedzialek,捷克语为pondělí.在土耳其语中是Pazartesi,意思为“星期天后的那天”.日语和韩语采用共同的古汉语词汇“月曜日”（平假名为げつようび,韩语为월요일）来作为星期一的名称,意思是“月亮之日”.