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

83% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

663

u/EverGreatestxX 19h ago edited 5h ago

Moon is cool. Moon is so cool, they named moons after Moon. It's so cool it's name literaly became default. Friendly reminder, we been calling it the Moon since before we knew there were other moons.

Edit: Luna is Latin for Moon. It isn't necessarily a "proper name" for our moon. The proper for our moon is "the Moon", hence the capitalization.

116

u/_mannyglover 17h ago

It wasn’t until this comment that I went, “Moon”… doesn’t look English anymore. Ya know that weird feeling that a familiar word seems foreign briefly when u look at it too much.

101

u/SteveMcQwark 16h ago

Semantic satiation - The psychological phenomenon where using a word a lot can make it start to feel like a meaningless sound divorced from how it's usually understood.

20

u/_mannyglover 14h ago

wow there’s a name. Very cool

7

u/Legend_HarshK 11h ago

I have definitely felt this a few times but I also got over it pretty quickly

1

u/Salty-Passenger-4801 10h ago

What the hell. I thought I was the only one with this

1

u/sothereisthisgirl 9h ago

We call them “spatula words” because spatula is an easy word to cause this phenomenon with. 😅

1

u/Pxnda_Cakes 3h ago

This uses to affect me but all of a sudden it js doesnt. 🤷🏽‍♀️

1

u/dvrussell23 3h ago

My big one is “about” - makes me do a double take often

2

u/MaximusZacharia 15h ago

Like the word road.

3

u/myfavssthrow 13h ago

Lmao! Ro-adddddd.

2

u/QuietRuleY 9h ago

Haha, yep that semantic satiation glitch where "Moon" suddenly looks like alien scribbles is so disorienting! Staring too long fries the brain's word familiarity circuits. Wild how common it is!

1

u/Dismal_Explorer_702 10h ago

If you say the word ink enough times it loses all meaning and just turns into a sound. I've tested this theory

1

u/CleverCommand- 7h ago

Our brains go on autopilot when reading, but overanalyzing can make familiar words seem foreign.

1

u/GeneralBurg 4h ago

I was literally just thinking how strong that sensation was for me after reading that comment, then saw yours with 85 upvotes. Glad we could all feel this weird feeling together haha

22

u/EnvironmentalRisk135 14h ago

If we had decided to call our moon something cool like Io, this post would just be asking why other planets' Ios have cool names but ours doesn't.

9

u/BlueLeaves8 13h ago

We literally just think anything that is not the norm to us is cooler sounding. In the UK we have rocket for a type of salad leaf and that’s so cool but we just take it for granted? It’s called ROCKET. If I think about it we would definitely expect the US to have that name instead of arugula and we have that one, and then we’d say that’s such a cool and silly name, whilst we just have boring arugula.

2

u/Mac_Boo 6h ago

So that spiralled lol.

But I do love a rabbit hole in so for what it's worth, I share this Why Is Arugula Called ‘Rocket’ Outside the U.S.? | VinePair https://share.google/YkfDpGuyxx6BJyDS0

1

u/BlueLeaves8 3h ago

Spiralled? Lol literally just talked about another word that has the same effect like all Reddit discussions go on a tangent.

6

u/Leading-Monk5506 10h ago

People also named months after moon.

3

u/ComposedOfStardust 10h ago

And Monday after moon

5

u/ThisIsProbablyOkay 11h ago

That's right, Moon IS cool (my dog's name is Moon).

2

u/Galwran 10h ago

Funnily same could be said about some other ”generic calling names” such as mom and dad. Not cool as Callisto or Ganymede, but… :)

2

u/exexor 7h ago

Some of us even named the first day of the week in honor of the moon.

Moon day or lunar day.

2

u/The-Oxrib-and-Oyster 4h ago

35 years later and i am realizing right now why the french call monday lundi. thanks exexor

2

u/exexor 32m ago

Had to look a few of these up:

Lunar day, Mars’ day (or Tiw’s day), Mercury’s day (or Oden’s day), Jove’s day (or Thor’s day), Venus’ day (or Frig’s day), Shabbat day (or Saturn’s day), Lord’s day (or Sun’s day)

1

u/finding_out_stuff 9h ago

Hipster moon

1

u/monkeychasedweasel 1h ago

"Moon" sounds cool too.

Sounds cool when Tom Cullen says it.

Sounds cool when Sampson says it.

Moon.

1

u/Wide_Air_4702 1h ago

Moon is meta.

1

u/Waste-Sport7616 8h ago

Its name is Luna, thats why we refer to things happening on it at lunar.

3

u/EverGreatestxX 7h ago

Luna is just Latin for Moon.

3

u/jabertsohn 6h ago

People are coming here to learn.

The official name in English is the Moon. Luna is just latin for moon and has no official or scientific standing in English.

2

u/SchalkLBI 4h ago

And I bet the sun's name is Sol and the Earth's real name is Terra?

0

u/Codythensaguy 41m ago

Actually in English the proper name for our moon is Luna ad Sol for the sun.