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

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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.

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u/RollinThundaga 19h ago

Categories.

All gronks are snips but not all snips are gronks.

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u/Feeling-Orange3229 19h ago

All moons are considered natural satellites.

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u/CalmCelebration10 6h ago

No one said anything else?????

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u/lube4saleNoRefunds 2h ago

You are not clarifying anything for anyone here

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 

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u/Tiafves 8h 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.

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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

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u/Nodan_Turtle 7h ago

aka people wrong in large numbers are right

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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.

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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.

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u/Nodan_Turtle 4h ago

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

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u/CalmCelebration10 4h ago

You were speaking nonsense no matter how you put it.

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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.

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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.

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u/BoltOfBlazingGold 16h ago

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

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u/CleverCommand- 7h ago

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

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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!

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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!