Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?
“Good” in Good Friday once meant “holy”. That is the most widely accepted explanation among linguists and theologians. The word “good” in older English, like “good book” for the Bible or “the good Lord”, carried the sense of sacred or pious — Good Friday meant Holy Friday.
The “holy” theory
In Old English and Middle English, “good” was sometimes used where modern English would use “holy” or “pious”. The Oxford English Dictionary records the phrase “guode friday” from the 13th century, and the construction parallels “Holy Saturday” and “Holy Week” — the same day in many other European languages is literally Holy Friday or Great Friday (German Karfreitag, Russian Velikaya Pyatnitsa, Greek Megáli Paraskeví).
The alternative “God’s Friday” theory
A second theory traces “good” to a corruption of “God’s” — Good Friday from God’s Friday, similar to how “goodbye” is a contraction of “God be with ye”. Etymological evidence for this is weaker. The OED does not endorse it, and the parallel use of “good” for “holy” elsewhere in older English makes the “holy” theory more persuasive.
What other countries call it
- France: Vendredi saint — Holy Friday
- Germany: Karfreitag — from Old High German kara, meaning sorrow or mourning
- Italy: Venerdì santo — Holy Friday
- Spain: Viernes santo — Holy Friday
- Greece: Megáli Paraskeví — Great Friday
- Russia: Velikaya Pyatnitsa — Great Friday
- Ireland (Irish language): Aoine an Chéasta — Friday of the Crucifixion
English is unusual in attaching “good” to it — the linguistic puzzle that drives the question in the first place.
So why “good” if it commemorates crucifixion?
From the Christian theological point of view, the crucifixion is “good” because it is the means of redemption. So even on the surface meaning of “good”, the term holds — it celebrates the salvific significance of the event, not its sadness. But the linguistic root is almost certainly the older sense of “good” as “holy”.
For more on the day itself, see our Good Friday pillar.