My daughter asked me an interesting question last night, one I couldn't answer. Does our moon have a real name?

Now I know the other planets with moons seem to have really cool names like Triton, Enceladus, Callisto etc. but I've only ever heard Earths moon called "The Moon". I'm also aware of names the moon have been given such as Harvest Moon, Hunters Moon etc. but those aren't real names. Aside from Luna I've heard of nothing else.

So, does "The Moon" have a real name and if not, why?

Just curious.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

The Moon was named so long before planets were discoverd having their own orbiting satellites. So your question might more appropriately be: "Why are all other moons named after The Moon? Why didn't they come up with a general name for planetary satellites?" To which the answer is: they did: they're called planetary satellites.


(Unrelated question: why is God called God when all the other gods have their own cool names? )

Yawweh. And a few other other names recognized by various peoples of the Book.

Enough, this discussion will be difficult to keep secular.

Speaking of secular, if you can find a copy, you might try "Asimov's Guide to the Bible."

Regards, John M.

Nineplanets.org: Planetary Linguistics

Lists names of the Moon (and the Sun and planets) in languages from Old English to Klingon.

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Then, welcome to BAUT!

In my opinion ...

The moon (which should be rendered with a lower case "m") is named Luna.
The sun (which should be rendered with a lower case "s") is named Sol.
The earth (which should be rendered with a lower case "e") is named Earth.

In the last case, "earth" is not capitalized when used with "the", but is capitalized when used as a proper name, without "the". This is the way I write them. I am not sure what the official IAU rules are and I am too lazy to search their webpages to find out. I am sure that the IAU name for the moon is in fact Luna.

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The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. -- Bertrand Russell

The answer to your question is no, it doesn't. Some people have suggested Luna, but that's not an official name, to the best of my knowledge.

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"Science is physics and astronomy." -Me
"There is absolutely no law in physics that prevents time travel." -Dr. Michio Kaku

NASA: Solar System Exploration: Frequently Asked Questions

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What would make it official? I tried looking through IAU for any references to a definition or name of the 3 that Tim mentions, but can't find anything definite. That doesn't mean they don't have anything, but with the frenzy of "planet", I would think there would be something. Either that, or they are avoiding any issue that an acceptance would cause.

They seem to use "the Sun", but not without the "the".
I can't find much in the way of moon.
And I see "Earth" stated in some various lists.

Is there a basis for the opinion? I see you mention "This is the way I write them.", but not a reason for writing them that way.
My opinion is similar to your's except Terra instead of Earth. My reasoning is that this is science of the Greek and Roman times when these ideas were becoming widespread. The only reason I favor the Latin is because it has been more widely used. (or so it seems to me).

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I guess the IAU has a case in not selecting a name, since they would have to select a preferential language first.

Personally, I'm found of capitalizing when writng about our sun and our moon, to distinguish from others.

And I just realized I didn't capitalize them in the previous sentence. Ah, there's nothing like a self-referencing statement to ruin predicate logic.

By the way, this sentence is false.

It's that simple; we call the Moon 'The Moon' simply because it has no official name of its own. Same goes for the Sun.

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"Science is physics and astronomy." -Me
"There is absolutely no law in physics that prevents time travel." -Dr. Michio Kaku

Although I did not know about the information in Zero-One's quote from
the NASA FAQ he linked to, it describes exactly my usage for the last
twenty years.

The Moon is called "the Moon" because that is its name in English.
It has been called "the Moon" in English for about as long as English has
existed. Same thing with the Earth and Sun. I refer to the Sun, Moon,
and Earth with or without a definite article (the word "the") as needed to
make the sentence flow nicely.

Humor which I read somewhere: Why is our planet named after dirt?

The words "moon" and "satellite" are essentially synonyms in English.
At the start of the space age it was common to refer to "artificial moons".
That has become less common, with "satellite" more often used, but it still
needs to be stated whether it is an artificial satellite or a natural satellite
that is being referred to when the context does not make it clear.

Although I correctly wrote the term "space age" above, I believe that
Space is a place, so is a proper name, so for the last twenty years I have
capitalized the word "space" when using it as the name of the big place
where Earth resides. Nomatter where in the Universe you go, there you
are, somewhere in Space.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Same reason we humans are

Longer, I believe; if I am not mistaken, it stems from the original Anglo-Saxon.

Humour-ruining pedantry--it isn't. Dirt is named after our planet.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

In what sense do you mean that? The Old English or Germanic forms predate the recognition of the Earth as a planet. You know, the classical elements, earth, air, water, and fire. (I just googled it, and found these lyrics: "Earth, wind, fire, and air We may look bad but we don't care" -- Scooby Doo)

But wasn't it the Greeks who had the classical elements? What did they call it: terra? (since "terrain" comes from the word--it could mean "dirt" rather than "earth", "earth" being just a modern translation of the word). Or was it Geo or something similar?

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

Lost in Space?

Sorry, Jeff, I couldn't resist it.

Regards, John M.

I think they should be in all capitals. as in, the EARTH and the other PLANETS.

Individuals' names such as bob and tracy are not important enough to have capitals. I think only objects such as STARS and PLANETS should be capitalized.

/end prot

Your Momma should be capitalized then

Well enough.

Now, If I only knew how to capitalize a word in Chinese, Arabic, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Ethiopian, Hebrew, Singhalese, Devanagari, ...

Oops.

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Ach, mein Sinn, wo willst du endlich hin, wo soll ich mich erquicken? Bleib' ich hier, oder wünsch' ich mir Berg und Hügel auf den Rücken?
Bei der Welt ist gar kein Rat, und im Herzen steh'n die Schmerzen meiner Missetat, weil der Knecht den Herrn verleugnet hat.

I prefer Oscar, but it hasn't caught on very well...

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

But "Earth" as "the place we live" is older than "Earth" as "this planet." Most cultures had Earth goddesses, after all.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Absolutely. And we have to also keep in mind that there are languages like German where all nouns are capitalized anyway. So I guess whoever from the IAU wrote that was thinking of English or maybe French or something.

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As above, so below

Water, fire, and air, too, right?

Somebody else brought up the IAU rules, so I'm not really adding anything. But in fact the IAU's rule makes a lot of sense. When we talk about planets outside the solar system or asteroids, for example, it is usually only astronomers who discuss them. So it makes sense to have an "official name" that astronomers around the world share. But with something like the sun or the moon, all languages on earth have a name, often several names, and it just doesn't make sense to give them an "official name" because people would just go on calling them what they always have called them.

Just as an aside, the question your daughter asked leads to some interesting points. In fact, there is no such concept in the English language of "official names," because there is no body, such as the French Academy in France, that can set official standards for the language. The "real word" in English is the word that people use, period. People and geographical places may have "official names," i.e. listed in official documents, but there is no government body that can decide, for example, that a "mountain" is anything more than 300 meters in height whereas a "hill" is one that is lower. Scientific groups may do it, but it does not have any legal force.

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As above, so below

I don't think it is. In etymonline.com, it says that earth originally meant "ground, soil, dry land" but also meant "the material world". It says that the use to mean our planet is from about 1400 AD, but I think it's tricky, because I'm not sure if people in ancient times were aware that we were living on a "planet". In any case, the use of the same word for our planet and soil or land is not all that uncommon. In Malay, the word "bumi" means both "soil" and our planet.

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As above, so below

Not as universally, no. The sea was often a god; the Earth was almost always a goddess. Air and fire weren't generally either. They just were.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I didn't mean goddess, I meant god or goddess What about this goddess of the air? Or this goddess of water? And, of course, the goddess of fire, Pele.

I wouldn't call Chaos a "goddess of air" any more than Cosmos was a god/dess of order. They were states of being. You'll note, however, that regardless of your definitions, the Greeks didn't have a god/dess of fire, and that most water deities were of a specific body of water, not water as an element.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"