Moon and Earth Names

Translations of the Bible into English was one of the earliest recorded uses of the name Earth – "God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good."

It is called ‘terra’ in Portuguese, ‘dünya’ in Turkish and ‘aarde’ in Dutch. The common thread in all languages is that they were all derived from the same meaning in their origins, which is ‘ground’ or ‘soil’.

The modern English word and name for our planet Earth goes back at least 1,000 years. Just as the English language evolved from ‘Anglo-Saxon’ (English-German) with the migration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century AD, the word ‘Earth’ came from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘erda’ and its Germanic equivalent ‘erde’ which means ground or soil. In Old English, the word became ‘eor(th)e’ or 'ertha '.

The Moon did have other names, including the name of an ancient deity, Luna, the Roman Goddess of the Moon. The word Luna is still associated with the Moon. For instance, Luna is the root of words like lunar.

When humanity first learned of other moons orbiting the planets in our solar system, one of the primary reasons they were given names was to differentiate them from the Moon, which is still the official name of our moon in English. The word “moon” can be traced back to Old English, where it is said to have derived from the Proto-Germanic word “menon”, which in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European “menses”, meaning “month, moon”.

With few exceptions, the Moon has long been associated with women, fertility, and a whole host of other female attributes. In most cases, menstrual cycles more or less coincide with the phases of the Moon. It should then come as no surprise that across many languages, the words for “moon”, “month”, and the name for a woman’s menstrual cycle often has the same root word.

Random Interesting Facts

There are over two hundred corpses on Mt. Everest and some are used as way markers for climbers.

The tallness of a mountain refers to its length from base to summit. The height refers to the length from sea level to summit. Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, but it is not the tallest. At 33,465 ft (10,200 m) Mauna Kea in Hawaii is taller than Everest, which is only 29,029 ft (8,848 m). However, almost two thirds of Mauna Kea is underwater.

The US Supreme Court's basketball court is on the fifth floor of the United States Supreme Court Building, higher than the second floor courtroom, so it has been dubbed the highest court in the land.

Almost twenty five percent of Los Angeles is covered by automobiles and there are also more cars than people in Los Angeles.

John D. Rockefeller's wealth, when adjusted for inflation was ten times greater than Bill Gates.

There are over seventy various spacecrafts on the Moon, as well as a few flags, some golf balls, some TV cameras, empty packages and, human waste containers. All total over 400,000 pounds.

Time

The new year is a good time to think about time. In 1903, the Wright brothers performed their first successful flight.

In 1941, 38 years later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. (Mount Rushmore was completed in 1941).

In 1969, just 28 years after that, man landed on the moon. In 66 years man went from flight a few feet off the earth to flying to the moon.

In 2012, 109 years after the Wright brothers flight we landed a craft on Mars and it is communicating back to us with pictures.

Wikipedia lists the names of 41 people born during or before 1903 that are still living.

Ponzo Illusion

Have you ever wondered why the Moon looks bigger on the horizon? It is an illusion, known as the Ponzo Illusion. What is happening is actually something that your brain does all the time. The yellow lines are the same size, but the top one appears larger.

Think about what happens when you see one of your friends on the horizon. Although they appear to be very small, your brain doesn’t actually interpret them as being that tiny. This is what happens when we look at the moon. Your brain inflates the size of the Moon to make it appear larger than it really is. Next time you are looking at an over-sized moon, block everything else out with your hands and watch it appear to shrink.

Moon Size

Did you ever wonder how large the moon is. Here is a picture comparing it to the United States.