Mercury is the Roman god of commerce, communication, travel, and thievery. Venus is the god of love and beauty in Roman mythology. Mars gets its name from the Roman god of War. Jupiter, meanwhile, is the King of Gods in Roman mythology, making the name of a fitting choice for the largest planet in our solar system. Saturn, the farthest planet that can be seen by the unaided human eye, gets its name from the Roman god of wealth and agriculture. Uranus is named after the ancient Greek deity of the skies and the heavens. Neptune, the farthest planet from the sun, is named after the Roman god of the Sea.
No Greco-Roman connect
In case you read the above paragraph, and read it again to see if you had missed out Earth in it, you can be assured that Earth isn’t mentioned in it. This is because Earth is the only planet in the solar system whose English name does not derive from Roman or Greek mythology.
The English name of the planet, Earth, comes from Old English and Germanic. It is derived from the Old English words eor(th)e, ertha, and eorpe, all of which correspond to both “ground, soil, dirt, country” and “the abode of man, the material world”. The Proto-Germanic words erde and erp-o also have similar meanings.
Common theme
While this much is known, there is no clear answer as to how exactly Earth got this name. The planet we call home, however, has many other names in many other languages. Despite the vast amount of languages spoken in the world and their very different histories, the name used for Earth in most languages is a form of a word that is connected to ‘ground’ or ‘soil’. What is Earth called in your native language?
Picture Credit : Google
