a query for you astronomical types

[veronica_rich]

Does Earth's moon have a proper name?

Varying cultures have differing names for the planets and their satellites, but due to English being predominant or whatever, we're generally attuned to using Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc. etc. as the recognizable names of the planets. Likewise, each planet's moons have proper names - Europa, Io, etc. etc. Hell, even our planet has a proper name - Earth. And the sun is known as many things, but I've seen Sol a few times in my life, enough to make it a partial answer on that score. (Though to be fair, our system only has the one sun of any note, so it's less a question than the moon thing.)

Think about it - we just call ours "the moon." But other planets have moons. There are many moons in our solar system. So what's our moon's name? Is it Luna? Because I've never seen that used in any astronomical literature. And yes, I know all our astronomical bodies probably have numeric designations for science - but I mean a NAME for the moon. (And you can't really just say "Moon" either, because it's not written out capitalized. Plus, the other moons are also called moons ... okay, I've said that already.)

Comments

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

According to wiki our moon is just the Moon, and I haven't heard it called anything else in the two other languages I'm proficient in enough to know things like that. I'm kind of bummed people were too lazy to give it a proper name of its own, too.

[philosophercat.livejournal.com]

Luna?

[nazz88.livejournal.com]

"Luna" and "Sol" are Latin and are sometimes used in scientific literature. But these are not names but just the translation from English - or rather the other way round, as Latin is older than English.

[bayliss.livejournal.com]

You've already got answers, but I'm going to chime in with, just the moon. It's a bit lazy, but that's what it's called. :(

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

LOL, that's really going to annoy me now. Yeah, I would have used Luna, even though as has been pointed out, that's basically just 'moon'. I guess there's never been a reason because it's THE one and only for us.

[bellumed.livejournal.com]

Related in a roundabout way: there's a reason so many early tribes gave themselves names that translate to "the People." We are The People, it is The Moon. Everything else is... alien.

[gobsmacked.livejournal.com]

I asked a couple of astronomy geeks and I know that's all it is.
If Earth had two moons, they might have been given different names. But our planet would still be "The Earth" :-)

But that's really just the scientific answer:

It is apparent from records of ancient celestial observations that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, various sub-varities of Mesopotamians, etc. recognized the existance of both fixed stars, which formed part of a constellation and "wandering stars" - i.e. planets - and named all of them after deities. The planets are named after deities and we use mostly the Latin versions of the names. The planets they knew of in the Mediterranean world were Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.
The Sun and Moon, on the other hand were unique, overwhelming and omnipresent phenonmena. Therefore all ancient cultures of which I am aware gave them at least one name: a name referring to the physical object they perceived and another designating the deity which was associated with it. (The Egyptians gave the sun at least 4). Thus, the moon was Σελήνη (Selene - Luna in Latin). Selene was also a very ancient moon goddess - her worship was already archaic when the myths were being written down - who was one of the deities who got associated with the Moon in Greek and Roman mythology: Artemis (or Cynthia), Diana, Phoebe.

None of those other goddesses' names were adopted as a term for the moon in common writing. That was always "luna".

By contrast, the names of Mercury, Venus, Mars and so on are applied to the planets without (so far as I know) without a specific term to designate each one. (I'm not sure if I'm explaining that correctly)

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

I think I've heard Diana in some literary works.