水曜日
すいようび · suiyoubi · JLPT N5 · noun
Wednesday
💧 水曜日 = water + day of the week: Wednesday is water day
Japanese weekdays are named after planets and elements. 水 (sui) is water, as in 水星, Mercury, the water star. Wednesday is Mercury's day in Romance languages too: Spanish miércoles, Italian mercoledì. 曜日 (youbi) just means day of the week.
水 — pictograph of flowing water
水 is a pictograph depicting a stream of flowing water, with the central line representing the main current and the side strokes showing splashing droplets or ripples. In oracle bone script it was drawn even more clearly as a wavy vertical line with branches. It retains its original meaning of 'water' and also serves as a radical, often appearing in the compressed form 氵.
日 — pictograph of the sun
日 is a pictograph of the sun, originally drawn as a circle with a dot or stroke inside representing the sun's substance. Over time the round shape was squared off into the modern rectangular form. It means 'sun' and by extension 'day'.