Whether you call our planet Earth, earth, or terrestrial body, all of these names have their origins in deep history.
Like many names for the organisms of the solar system, the original name Earth has disappeared into history. But linguistics offers some clues. Ertha is the approximate spelling of the word “earth” (ie the land we stand on) in Anglo-Saxon, one of the many ancestral languages of English.
“Anglo-Saxon” is the modern term for a cultural group that lived in modern England and Wales between the fifth century and the Norman conquest in 1066, shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire.
Scientists say that people’s identities are complex and it is possible for different individuals to have different connections, depending on their families, histories and the land they inhabit. Heritage, like any other name that represents our planet, must be understood in this context.
Independent archaeologist and historian Gillian Heuvel says that “heritage” in Anglo-Saxon means “the land on which you walk, where you grow your crops.”
Hofele says that “heritage” is associated with a place where life arose, perhaps even with buried ancestors. But sometimes a name can change its meaning depending on the culture.
The other common modern term for “world” comes from Latin. Hofele says that the word Terra means truth — again, the land on which you stand, plant, or otherwise interact. And it is modern English for ‘terrestrial’, ‘underground’, ‘extraterrestrial’ etc. where we get the words.
Orbis was used when researchers wanted to talk about the Earth as a sphere. “They knew it was a sphere,” Hofele said of the ancient Romans, who closely followed Greek science. The Greek Eratosthenes measured the circumference of our planet in 240 BC.
“It’s a sphere,” Hofele said of the meaning of Orbis, the modern root of the word “orbit.” There is another term, Mundus, which is intended to describe the entire universe.
Hofele on Mundus: “The world is ours[insanların]it’s all it has, ”he said,“ but it’s clearly completely separate from the planets. ” The word mundus is found in the modern French monde (earth), Italian mondo, Spanish world, and Portuguese world, among other Latin “Romantic languages” of the ancestors.
Hofele says that the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus), who wrote so many volumes on natural history in the first century, used Mundus extensively in his notes. Although each culture has its own traditions and titles, we also take many of the terms used by the International Astronomical Union to name the planets from Pliny.
The tradition of naming the planets used by the Romans goes back somehow to the history of the Babylonians. The Babylonian state is complex in parts of modern-day Iraq and Syria; here he is most remembered for his king, Hammurabi, who is now closely associated with a law established during his reign.
The Babylonian state lasted from about 1900 to 539 BC; The Persians (and later the Achaemenid Empire) then took over the area. The Persians became the worst enemies of the Greeks, but both empires shared cross-cultural knowledge. Hofele explains that the Greeks included some gods from Persia in this way.
Later, when the Romans rose to prominence, they incorporated traditions from the regions they touched, including Greece, into their pantheon of gods. It allowed, for example, the goddess of love Ishtar from Babylon to become Aphrodite under the Greeks and Venus under the Romans.
According to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the Greek word for planets means something like “a wandering planet” or “a wandering one.” Centuries before the invention of telescopes, the Romans gave these planets their names based on how they appeared in the sky without being seen. However, these names are not always general.
Hofele said that Pliny the Elder was sometimes called Mercury after another god Apollo, because Apollo was closely related to the sun. Mercury itself is the messenger of the gods and is associated with travelers, among many other signs.
Named after Venus, whose associations also include the goddess of love, the planet is sometimes called the “light-bringer” Lucifer. This is the name the planet can get when it rises at dawn. Hovel said the Romans understood that Venus rose in the morning or evening, but the name of the planet could change depending on the features displayed.
Pliny once wrote that Mars was “burning with fire.” He and the other Romans at the time thought that Mars was too close to the sun, because they followed Ptolemy’s geocentric model, which placed our planet at the center of the universe.
Hofele says that the glorious aspect of Jupiter is associated with Saturn (who followed Jupiter in the geocentric model) as the king of the gods and father of Jupiter according to Roman mythology, again borrowed from ancient traditions.
Meanwhile, centuries later, people named Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto in the early telescopic period sought to continue this tradition of divine connotation, as the Romans did. But even this practice is not universal. Example: Uranus was almost named after George III when it found a way to thank the financial backer of its discoverer, the German -born British astronomer William Herschel, according to NASA.
Source: Life Science
Source: Arabic RT
