Friday is one of the main characters of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe names the man Friday, with whom he cannot at first communicate, because they first meet on that day.
Crusoe describes Friday as being a Native American, though very unlike the Indians of Brazil and Virginia. His religion involves the worship of a mountain god named Benamuckee, officiated over by high priests called Oowokakee. Crusoe learned a few of his native words that have been found in a Spanish-Térraba (or Teribe) dictionary, so Friday may have belonged to that tribe, also called the Naso people. Friday is cannibalistic as well and suggests eating the men Crusoe has killed.
Crusoe teaches Friday the English language and converts him to Christianity. He convinces him that cannibalism is wrong. Friday accompanies him in an ambush in which they save Friday’s father.
The term Man Friday became an idiom to describe an especially faithful servant or one’s best servant or right-hand man. The female equivalent is Girl Friday. The July 1, 1912, edition of the news magazine “Industrial World,” Volume 46, Issue 2, published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, uses the term Girl Friday. The title of the 1940 movie His Girl Friday alludes to it and may have popularised it.
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