What is the only planet not named after a god?

Brainz

Since all the other planets are named after gods, I will say Earth. http://astronomy.wakaf.net/htm/earth.htm [Link added Mar. 1, 2008 by Zbeckabee] Jul 01 00, 1:46 AM

A.L. Short

The Earth. In Sci-Fi fiction it is often referred to as Terra, which has no connotation with a god. _________________ NOTE: The name Earth originates from the 8th century Anglo-Saxon word erda, which means ground or soil. In Old English the word became eorthe, then erthe in Middle English. Earth was first used as the name of the planet around 1400. It is the only planet whose name in English is not derived from Greco-Roman mythology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth [Note & link added Mar. 1, 2008 by Zbeckabee] Jul 01 00, 3:49 AM

zbeckabee

Since Earth was only generally accepted as a planet in the 17th century, there is no tradition of naming it after a god (the same is true, in English at least, of the Sun and the Moon, though they are no longer considered planets). The name originates from the 8th century Anglo-Saxon word erda, which means ground or soil and was first used in writing as the name of the sphere of the Earth perhaps around 1300. It is the only planet whose name in English is probably not derived from greco-roman mythology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_planets The planet names are derived from Roman and Greek mythology, except for the name Earth which is Germanic and Old English in origin. Earth is Old English and German in origin, related to the Old Saxon 'ertha', the Dutch 'aerde', and the German 'erda'. Terra is a French and Latin word, and so isn't part of the 'Earth' etymology. http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=451 http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=372 Mar 01 08, 1:15 PM

queproblema

So who's Gaia? Gaia ("land" or "earth", also Gaea or Ge) is the primal Greek goddess personifying the Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_%28mythology%29 And Tellus or Terra? Gaia being the primordial element from which all the gods originated was worshiped throughout Greece, but later she went into decline and was supplanted by other gods. In Roman mythology she was known as Tellus or Terra. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/g/gaia.html [Added text from the reference links - McG] Alternate spelling is "Gaea." I don't know Greek, but am pretty sure that in New Testament times "earth" was "ge." I'm not sure about modern Greek. Contracted from a primary word; soil; by extension a region, or the solid part or the whole of the terrene globe (including the occupants in each application): - country, earth (-ly), ground, land, world. From Strong's Greek lexicon. The Greek "gamma eta" is the root of "geography," "George," etc. And it seems to be transliterated "gi," not "ge." http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexicon My guess is that we're seeing two cultures and mythologies here: the classical from Greco-Roman tradition, and the Anglo-Saxon. So, Earth would be the only planet not named after a god or goddess in English and probably the other Germanic languages. The Italic would set Terra and her court of cognates into the celestial pantheon. It would be interesting to know about the other language families and branches, but that would open a new question. Mar 01 08, 1:40 PM

Arpeggionist

Although, Pluto was named in a time when it was thought to be a planet, and was so named because the first letters of its name were the initials of Percival Lowell, who was certainly not worshiped by anyone as a deity. Mar 01 08, 5:56 PM

McGruff

Re: the naming of Pluto The right to name the new object belonged to the Lowell Observatory. Tombaugh urged Slipher to suggest a name for the new object quickly before someone else did. Name suggestions poured in from all over the world. Constance Lowell proposed Zeus, then Lowell, and finally her own first name. These suggestions were disregarded. The name Pluto was first suggested by Venetia Burney (later Venetia Phair), an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England. Venetia was interested in classical mythology as well as astronomy, and considered the name, one of the alternate names of Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld, appropriate for such a presumably dark and cold world. She suggested it in a conversation with her grandfather Falconer Madan, a former librarian of Oxford University's Bodleian Library. Madan passed the name to Professor Herbert Hall Turner, who then cabled it to colleagues in America. The object was officially named on March 24, 1930. Each member of the Lowell Observatory was allowed to vote on a short-list of three: "Minerva" (which was already the name for an asteroid), "Cronus" (which had garnered a bad reputation after being suggested by an unpopular astronomer named Thomas Jefferson Jackson See), and Pluto. Pluto received every vote. The name was announced on May 1, 1930. Upon the announcement, Madan gave Venetia five pounds as a reward. The name Pluto was intended to evoke the initials of the astronomer Percival Lowell, a desire echoed in the P-L monogram that is Pluto's astronomical symbol. Pluto's astrological symbol resembles that of Neptune, but has a circle in place of the middle prong of the trident. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto Mar 01 08, 10:42 PM

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