L' Hebdomadaire or Hebdomedarius

 Which Monk Is The Hebdomedarius?

While I was in Toronto at the beginning of the year, my friend Gil and I spoke of various and sundry things. Somehow "Charlie Hebdo" came up and one thing led to another and it ended up with me saying, "Do you actually think that most people do not know that 'Hebdo" is an abbreviation for French "hebdomedaire",  which is from Latin 'hebdomedarius',  and means a weekly magazine... literally (every) seven days?!"

He bloody laughed at me.

Well, the only reason I knew it was the fact that I was familiar with the Latin "hebdomedarius":

The Hebdomedarius (otherwise termed Aquillarius Canonicus) was, as the name implies, the officiant of the week; each monk in holy orders being obliged to perform divine service in rotation.
(i.e., every 7 days)

ECCLESIASTICAL RECORDS OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND SCOTLAND,
FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY TILL THE REFORMATION:
BY THE REV. RICHARD HART, B.A.,
VICAR of Catton in the diocese of Norwich

and "hebdo" itself was Greek, since the Latin for "seven" was septem and one would expect something like "septenary". (The "s" in septem in Greek became an aspirate "h", the "p" became a voiced "b" and the "t" became a voiced "d", so the sequence in Latin s-p-t is Greek h-b-d.)

So....... Charlie Hebdo means Weekly Charlie, and I learned a valuable lesson of some sort. So did he. I think he got the better lesson.

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