Were you a Monday’s child, “fair of face”, or a Wednesday’s child, “full of woe”? Finding the day of the week you were born takes about ten seconds with the right tool, and with a little practice you can even work it out in your head. Here’s how, plus what the famous nursery rhyme says about each day and where it comes from.
The Fastest Way to Find Your Birth Day
- Use a date tool. Enter your date of birth as the date in our Age on a Date Calculator and it shows the weekday that date fell on, along with your exact age on any other date.
- Use your phone’s calendar. Jump back to your birth month and year; most calendar apps let you scroll or search by date.
- Ask a search engine something like “day of the week 15 May 1990”.
Curious about the future too? The Birthday Countdown shows which weekday your next birthday falls on.
The “Monday’s Child” Rhyme
The best-known version of the traditional English nursery rhyme goes:
Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for a living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
What Each Day Means
| Born on | The rhyme says | In plain English |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Fair of face | Good-looking |
| Tuesday | Full of grace | Graceful, elegant, kind |
| Wednesday | Full of woe | Sorrowful, with a sad life |
| Thursday | Has far to go | A long, eventful journey through life |
| Friday | Loving and giving | Warm and generous |
| Saturday | Works hard for a living | Hard-working |
| Sunday | Bonny and blithe, and good and gay | Attractive, cheerful and good-natured (“gay” here in its old sense of happy) |
It’s folklore, not prediction: there’s no evidence that birth weekday shapes personality. The rhyme was mostly a way to help children learn the days of the week, and a bit of fun for parents.
Where the Rhyme Comes From
The rhyme was first written down in England in 1836, in A. E. Bray’s Traditions of Devonshire, and was later collected by the folklorist James Orchard Halliwell in the mid-19th century. The wording has varied over time. In a version printed in Harper’s Weekly in 1887, it’s Friday’s child who is “full of woe”, likely reflecting the old superstition that Friday is unlucky, and Halliwell’s version ends with a child born on Christmas Day instead of the Sabbath.
How to Work Out Any Weekday in Your Head (the Doomsday Rule)
Mathematician John Conway popularised a mental trick called the Doomsday rule. It relies on the fact that, in any given year, a set of easy-to-remember dates all fall on the same weekday, called that year’s “doomsday”:
- 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10 and 12/12
- 5/9 and 9/5, 7/11 and 11/7 (remember “working 9 to 5 at 7-Eleven”)
- The last day of February and March 14 (Pi Day)
Step 1: find the year’s doomsday. Take the last two digits of the year (call it y), add y ÷ 4 rounded down, and find the remainder after dividing by 7. Count that many days forward from the century’s anchor day: Wednesday for the 1900s and Tuesday for the 2000s.
Step 2: count from the nearest doomsday date to your birthday.
Example: 15 May 1990. y = 90; 90 + 22 = 112; 112 ÷ 7 leaves 0. So 1990’s doomsday is Wednesday + 0 = Wednesday. May 9 (5/9) is a doomsday, so it was a Wednesday; May 16 was also a Wednesday, which makes 15 May 1990 a Tuesday. A Tuesday’s child: “full of grace”.
Example: 11 July 2005. y = 5; 5 + 1 = 6; remainder 6. Tuesday + 6 days = Monday, and 7/11 is a doomsday, so 11 July 2005 was a Monday.
It takes some practice, but it’s a genuinely impressive party trick once you have it.
Which Day Are Most Babies Born On?
If births were random, each weekday would get about 1 in 7. In practice, far fewer babies are born at weekends in countries like the US, because many deliveries (planned inductions and scheduled caesareans) are booked on weekdays. Research on US birth records shows Sunday births began to fall below the weekday level in the 1930s, and Saturday births from the 1950s. So if you’re a weekend baby, you’re in a smaller club than your weekday friends.
Frequently Asked Questions
What day of the week was I born?
Enter your date of birth in a date tool such as the Age on a Date Calculator, look it up in a calendar app, or use the Doomsday rule above to work it out in your head.
What does “Wednesday’s child is full of woe” mean?
It’s a line from the traditional “Monday’s Child” nursery rhyme, suggesting a sorrowful life. It’s folklore with no real predictive meaning, and in at least one 19th-century version it’s Friday’s child who is full of woe instead.
What is the luckiest day to be born according to the rhyme?
Traditionally Sunday: “bonny and blithe, and good and gay”, meaning attractive, cheerful and good-natured.
Is the Monday’s Child poem the same everywhere?
No. It’s an English folk rhyme that exists in several slightly different versions, and other cultures have their own day-of-birth traditions.
Find the weekday of any date, and your exact age on it, with the free Age on a Date Calculator.
Sources: Monday’s Child (Wikipedia); “Births by day of week: a historical perspective” (PubMed).