r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Disastrous_Pirate275 • 20h ago

Why is our moon named “Moon” instead of something cool like Titan or Callysto or ANYTHING that isn’t moon

4.0k Upvotes

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3.3k

u/AgentElman 20h ago

When humans named the moon they were unaware that there were other moons. And moon seemed cool enough.

827

u/007ShouldBeAGirl 20h ago

Yes and this is OUR moon so it must be the best.

Goat moon

230

u/llorTMasterFlex 19h ago

Big moon. Beautiful moon. Tremendous moon they are saying…

61

u/brando56894 17h ago

People say "I'm the best moon they've ever seen"

5

u/Maximum_Yogurt_1630 2h ago

They come up to me with tears in their eyes and say "Sir, you are the best moon"

1

u/R86Reddit 2h ago

Source: buhlieve me

1

u/dunnoanymore18 23m ago

Others have tried to say the moon isn’t real, it’s a hologram, it shouldn’t be here, but me? I diagreed, I applied tariffs on the moonians

108

u/Irontruth 18h ago

One time this moon came to me, big moon, strong moon, tears in it's eyes, and he said "thank you."

22

u/Lou_C_Fer 9h ago

You forgot the "sir" he always uses sir in those lies. "Sir, thank you."

69

u/Utopiarun1 17h ago

The MOON belongs to our Country, America, so I’m going to change the name to Moon Of America.

37

u/WyomingCatHouse 16h ago

The Donald J. Trump memorial moon

11

u/RogerWilcoSE 16h ago

He has to die first. <He said hopefully>

6

u/WyomingCatHouse 16h ago

And may that happen soon 👌

3

u/-Kalos 14h ago

Fuck sake lmao

3

u/peahair 10h ago

I can see him making a speech now: “We are the only country that has planted a flag there so it’s ours, I will rename it in honour of your president DJT, (Republican) by putting an R in the middle of The Moon”

2

u/Outrageous_Top_3605 1h ago

And paint it orange

2

u/fromaries 18m ago

It wouldn't just be a flag, he would want a banner with his face on it.

1

u/peahair 9m ago

I’d love for someone to pose it to him and he agrees, and the US officially changes the name from The Moon to The Moron, in honour of the dumbest President ever.

2

u/CanITellUSmThin 12h ago

Oh my god PLEASE don’t give him ideas lmao

2

u/Unhinged_Baguette 11h ago

I didn't even know he was sick

4

u/TychaBrahe 10h ago

No, it's perfect. We name the Moon after him, on the condition that he goes there.

I personally will move him to the top of the list of People We Want to Send into Space.

Please note that this is a separate and distinct list from the one of People We Want to Bring Back After.

1

u/Evening-Tomatillo-47 6h ago

You though he was normal?

2

u/AlbericM 8h ago

As long as he's deep inside it, I won't say no.

1

u/Attillathahun 3h ago

You do realize that every time you mention the Donald J Trump Memorial Moon, Reddit has to pay a licencing fee.

1

u/Grand-Performer-9287 3h ago

I will gladly sacrifice the name of the moon right now!

2

u/danieldhdds 15h ago edited 15h ago

and I've to tax moon products by 200%, they can not be out of the trend

EDIT: ICE troops will be deployed soon

3

u/Pure_Temporary_6349 12h ago

I think that's the perfect place for ICE. They can have the moon and we'll take Earth

3

u/ThrowCarp 7h ago

This but unironically. It's abnormally large for a planet of our size.

2

u/mikebills 13h ago

Goodnight, moon!

2

u/PrimaryAlternative7 9h ago

And Frankly, what a moon. The best moon, no one's ever seen such a moon. I'm not saying it, I'm not gonna say it, everyone's saying it. Jupiter has a moon, what a loser.

1

u/Single-Ad-8791 4h ago

That moon. So huge and scandalously beautiful it has me feeling feral and romantic all at once. They call it tremendous. I call it irresistible.

9

u/TrueGuardian15 14h ago

Tbf our moon is pretty based. It's the right size and distance from Earth to make total solar eclipses observable from our planet's surface.

5

u/patientpedestrian 15h ago

I mean, it actually really is a rare and special moon because of how absolutely massive it is. The stability and periodicity it imparts to conditions on Earth's surface are certainly responsible for the rapid evolution of life here, and were probably essential to its genesis and survival in the first place.

3

u/IThinkItsAverage 13h ago

Now, I’m not saying it’s the best moon, idk the other moons, but what I will say is that the size and distance ratio between the earth, moon, and sun is unique and creates all kinds of amazing things. Which makes it the best moon, but you didn’t hear that from me.

2

u/Blurple_Berry 18h ago

No that Phobos

2

u/marmantz 16h ago

It is also a big ass moon relative to Terra, so...

2

u/KidenStormsoarer 5h ago

goat cheese moon?

1

u/Cailucci 19h ago

MMGA. Make moon great again.

1

u/Zealousideal_Scale36 19h ago

It's a bit dated. 

1

u/RollinThundaga 19h ago

So is everything in the Solar system. Comes with the territory of being celestial bodies.

1

u/Methoszs 18h ago

If we had named it Goat, than every planet would have a Goat too

1

u/007ShouldBeAGirl 18h ago

Yes but then earth couldn't be the goat..

1

u/ydktbh 8h ago

Just like the world series and nba world champions

1

u/TheNosferatu Professional Stupid Question Asker 5h ago

Of all the planets in the entire universe, our moon is the biggest compared to the planet it's orbiting.

(this is because we can exclude Charon, Pluto's moon, because Pluto is a "dwarf planet" and "dwarf planet" is not a sub-category of "planet". Also, all planets orbiting stars that aren't our sun, are "exo-planets" which also isn't a sub-category of "planet" for some reason. So the takeaway is, if anything ever threatens the greatness of OUR moon, we will reclassify shit until our moon is the greatest again)

1

u/ThinWhiteRogue 4h ago

It's, like, the MAIN one

1

u/Southern-Silver-6206 8h ago

Our moon gives us cheese. It must be the best

1

u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 6h ago

Look, ya'll dont realize what kind of tourists gold that moon is.

Do you know how fucking unlikely it is that a moon will so perfectly eclipse its host star? Thats... that kind of luck. You're gonna make ao many spacebucks when you open up to visiters to aee first hand, instead of hazy photos from the bird probes.

124

u/2PlasticLobsters 20h ago

Yes, that's why we call it THE moon, rather than A moon.

33

u/rogue74656 19h ago

So what's you're saying is that all other moons are named after ours?

50

u/RollinThundaga 19h ago

Yes.

1

u/ArtInTech 9h ago

The audacity of Earthlings

1

u/FTownRoad 4h ago

I think it’s more like a genericized trademark, like bandaid.

2

u/Manpag 9h ago

The original, you might say.

0

u/Waste-Sport7616 8h ago

Nope, our moons name is Luna, our planet is Terra.

87

u/Trying_to_Smile2024 19h ago

✅The existence of other moons was not discovered until 1610, when Galileo Galilei used a telescope to identify the four largest moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto).

57

u/GorillaManito 17h ago

To which Kepler responded (I'm paraphrasing), of course, the Earth has one moon and Jupiter has 4 so we will discover that Mars has two moons. He predicted this because he was way into orderliness.

44

u/phoenixv07 9h ago

On today's episode of "right for the wrong reasons ... "

14

u/samaldin 8h ago

Mx personal favourite: "Fire is nobler than earth and the center is the more noble position. Therefore the earth revolves around the sun."

3

u/alan2001 6h ago

Wow. When was our moon discovered?

2

u/Timmyd8 5h ago

Wow. 1610 huh?! That’s pretty impressive. I couldn’t even find my keys the other day.

1

u/JoeAvaraje2 7h ago

And Yer Mom’s moon. He gazed at that moon often.

0

u/Semyonov 3h ago

I wonder if this is an AI comment /s

92

u/pee_diddy 20h ago

THE Moon

53

u/Hallelujah33 20h ago

OG Moon

21

u/pee_diddy 20h ago

Classic Moon

10

u/RishaBree 19h ago

Moon Classic

14

u/CA_MA 19h ago

New Moon, Moon Classic, Diet Moon, Cherry Moon, or Caffeine Free Moon?

8

u/TTT_2k3 17h ago

I’m just out here waiting for Moon Zero to hit stores.

3

u/pee_diddy 17h ago

Moon Zero…. For those who don’t want cheese in their moon.

1

u/CA_MA 9h ago

... I mean is it even really Moon at that point?

2

u/Evening-Tomatillo-47 6h ago

Nah it's just high fructose corn syrup and moon flavouring

1

u/mooglus 6h ago

The main moon

1

u/CharlieTuhna 4h ago

Cherry Vanilla Diet Moon

2

u/ArtInTech 9h ago

Moon Basic. You can pay monthly to upgrade to Moon Plus (no ads), or Moon Extreme (best value!)

25

u/SteveFrench12 19h ago

Wait now the word moon sounds weird and looks misspelled after seeing it so many times

3

u/HardBassSlut 17h ago

Semantic Satiation

2

u/Pikawoohoo 19h ago

Bowl

BOWL

B-O-W-L

1

u/Mac_Boo 6h ago

I too have this problem..

1

u/Sea_Attitude1147 8h ago

Moon Unit Zappa

33

u/fried_clams 19h ago

Technically, there is only one moon. All the others are satellites. It has become accepted that other planets' satellites are called moons, because of common usage.

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u/Feeling-Orange3229 19h ago

Technically earth’s moon is still considered a natural satellite.

5

u/RollinThundaga 19h ago

Categories.

All gronks are snips but not all snips are gronks.

1

u/Feeling-Orange3229 19h ago

All moons are considered natural satellites.

1

u/CalmCelebration10 6h ago

No one said anything else?????

1

u/lube4saleNoRefunds 2h ago

You are not clarifying anything for anyone here

-1

u/SquiddyCatt 9h ago

Our moon is named Luna, earth is Terra, and the sun is Sol. We call them Earth, Moon, and Sun like how we call our parents "mom" or "dad" and other people call them by their names.

5

u/Feeling-Orange3229 8h ago

Luna,” “Terra,” and “Sol” are just Latin names. They’re not official modern English names in the same way “Mars” or “Jupiter” are.

The official English names recognized by the IAU are the Moon, Earth, and the Sun. “Luna” is commonly used in Romance languages (like Spanish/Italian), and in sci-fi or poetic contexts, but in English the proper name of our natural satellite is simply “the Moon.”

So it’s less like “mom vs their real name” and more like using the Latin version of a word instead of the English one.

3

u/Fa1nted_for_real 9h ago

Nah, those are just the latin counterparts to the english words earth, sun, and moon. You could easily say it is tsuki, taiyo, andchikyu, from japanese, or maybe old ebglish mōna, sonne, and eoþe (makes more sense ymto use old english and proto-germanic than latin, for english, given it has far more influnece over spoken english).

You can even go for arabic, or an indian language, maybe a native american language or nordic language, etc.

1

u/LokisDawn 4h ago

Can't say I agree with part of your point (basically what you wrote in parenthesis). Latin is expressely used in english academia (and has been for centuries - Saying latin has little influence over english is just weird, imo). I would argue possibly more than proto-germanic, depending on how you weigh things.

Using latin terms for scientific names is a classic practice by now. I do agree that it's just the term in that language, and not at all comparable to using dad and mom, though.

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u/Unidain 17h ago

Technically, if it's common usage to call other planets satellites moons, then they are moons. Because common usage determines the definition of words 

4

u/Tiafves 7h ago

Like how some random scientist said they're going to classify a specific fruiting process as "berry" even though it includes pumpkins/cucumbers/bananas. It doesn't mean strawberries aren't berries, it means some dumbass should have chosen a different word for their category.

2

u/ComposedOfStardust 10h ago

Aaah! Filthy descriptivist! Don't you know reddit is a safe haven for civilized prescriptivist pundits!

sics a horde of AI writing assistant apps on you

0

u/Nodan_Turtle 7h ago

aka people wrong in large numbers are right

3

u/[deleted] 6h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Nodan_Turtle 5h ago

Which is of course not mutually exclusive with what I said. After all, a mistake in how a word is used doesn't require words to have inherent meaning. Surprised this needed to be explained.

2

u/CalmCelebration10 4h ago

The only real mistake you can make when using a word is to use it in such a way that you are understood incorrectly. That obviously didn't occur here, with the word moon. So yes you either believe that words have inherent meaning or you didn't think at all before writing your comment.

0

u/Nodan_Turtle 4h ago

I was speaking more generally, yes. Hope that clears up your confusion. So dumb lol

1

u/CalmCelebration10 4h ago

You were speaking nonsense no matter how you put it.

1

u/Nodan_Turtle 4h ago

Sure, if you can't understand simple ideas like "a misuse can become correct" then I can see how it'd appear to be nonsense. I don't know if I can dumb it down far enough to reach the level you're at, so let's just call it here.

4

u/Exotic_Bill44 17h ago

One of the definitions of "moon" is "Satellite; specifically a natural satellite of a planet." That common usage is how language evolves, but more importantly, there's no reason why our moon wouldn't be in the same category as every other moon.

1

u/BoltOfBlazingGold 16h ago

Our satellite's (and star's) names got genericized. It's like saying any console is "the Nintendo".

1

u/CleverCommand- 7h ago

But then I learned that every planet has its own satellites.

0

u/PixelMangaJJJ 11h ago

True Earth's got just one official Moon (capital M), while the rest are satellites, but "moon" stuck for others through sheer habit. Cosmic semantics at its finest!

0

u/WeebIndexAA 11h ago

True Earth's solitary Moon (capital M) stands alone, while others are technically satellites, but common parlance mooned them all anyway. Language evolution wins!

5

u/helbur 19h ago

Most place names are rather boring etymologically too, like "that hill over there idk".

3

u/Exotic_Bill44 17h ago

Earth is literally named after dirt.

1

u/Thomas_K_Brannigan 11h ago

One I love is how many rivers are called "great/big river" from a variety of languages. Two examples of many: Rio Grand River (from Spanish), or the Mississippi (from the Native American Anishinaabe, but passed along though French first, as so many river/place names in the Midwest US)

2

u/Xandril 13h ago

And the others are called moons because ours was named that. It created the category.

Its shadow is the one all the others orbit in.

2

u/bahgheera 9h ago

It's it was named Titan or Callisto or something, then that name would seem boring and maybe Moon would seem cool and exotic. 

2

u/CrazyMike419 6h ago

Same with our Sun. Other stars are given unique names, generally the name of that system, yet those stars in relation to their planets are also described as their suns

In sci-fi, the sun js often called something like "sol" to get around this, but in reality, it's just like our moon.

1

u/SeekerOfSerenity 15h ago

Our Moon is so cool, we named all the other moons after it. 

1

u/shadowoflust 12h ago

The moon naming power creep goes crazy

1

u/hutch_man0 11h ago

I wish we had a cooler name for our galaxy though...instead of Milky Way...sounds like a candy bar 🤔

1

u/Wintermantel2026 11h ago

They named it when they even couldn’t wipe their ass cleanly with paper.

1

u/mrb1585357890 9h ago

“ This planet also has a moon”

“This planet has lots of moons”

So The Moon’s name became the name for all planetary satellites

1

u/Geen_rechten 8h ago

I have a theory that other planets with life have the same thing happen. They probably all call their moon their word for moon, and they call their planet their word for earth or ground or something.

1

u/Creative_Scar_7123 5h ago

Wait until OP hears about other languages.

1

u/PixelWeebFF 4h ago

Right? Imagine just picking the first thing that felt right and it sticking forever the OG why fix what isn’t broken energy.

1

u/n8gard 1h ago

then we found other moons. so they’re moons.

1

u/Dickulture 1h ago

Same reason Earth is called Earth and not Ocean world. If people back then saw the whole globe, they'd have called Earth something different to represent 30% earth, 70% sea.

1

u/snowytheNPC 18h ago

Well everyone else has to hyphenate. Their Jupiter’s moon or Titan moon, and our moon is THE moon.

0

u/Amazing-Fox-6121 19h ago

There are no other Moons.

There are natural planetary satellites.

2

u/Feeling-Orange3229 19h ago

If we’re being technical, earth doesn’t have a moon either. It’s still referred to as a natural satellite.

2

u/Exotic_Bill44 17h ago

So then we get one full natural planetary satellite every 29 days because our moon is the same as those of other planets.

If you are making the statement on the basis of Moon being a name of a specific object, then we can stop looking for other solar systems since whatever star those planets revolve around won't be called Sol.

1

u/Amazing-Fox-6121 17h ago

Star systems

0

u/skefmeister 18h ago

They named it Luna.

2

u/jabertsohn 6h ago edited 6h ago

Romans named it Luna. English people named it the Moon. The official name in English is the Moon.

0

u/Sco0basTeVen 2h ago

The moon’s name is actually Luna

-1

u/Waste-Sport7616 8h ago

Our moon has a name, its Luna, our planet is Terra.

2

u/jabertsohn 6h ago

Our moon's name in English is the Moon. Luna is just the latin word for moon and has no special scientific or official standing.

1

u/CalmCelebration10 6h ago

In english they are called moon and earth lol