The origin of linguistic and culturological aspects of the weekly terms division of time in Chinese

<p><strong>Context and relevance. </strong>The article discusses and analyzes the features of the appearance in the modern Chinese language of the week terms division of time from the linguistic and cultural points of view. The analysis tool is a comparative analysis of the terms of the Old Chinese language Wenyan and modern Chinese Putonghua.<strong> Objective. </strong>An attempt is made to explain the designations of the seven-day weekly cycle, which has been preserved in use to this day. It is noted that in the ancient versions of the designation of the days of the week (namely, in the names of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday) contains five primary elements of the universe in its eastern sense (namely, fire, water, wood, metal, earth). It is indicated that the listed primary elements form the most important cycles of the ancient Chinese worldview, alternating images in their different sequence. The cycle of creation, or generation, and the cycle of destruction, or suppression. Separately, the authors consider the complete coincidence of the semantic and mythological content of the five considered primary elements in the Chinese names of the planets. A comparative analysis of the terms of the weekly division of time is also carried out, both in Eastern languages - Chinese, Japanese, Korean - and some Indo-European languages - English, French, Spanish, Italian.<strong> Conclusions. </strong>General positions and trends in the formation of the week terms division of time are revealed and conclusions are drawn that clarify some issues related to this issue in each of the aforenamed languages.</p>