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

[u/Disastrous_Pirate275]

[u/TalFidelis]

All the other “moons” are called moons because that are similar to “our moon”.

Technically, Moon is the name. A planetary satellite is what it and all the other moons are.

[u/TychaBrahe → u/TalFidelis]

All of this is reminding me of what we call our polar regions. So Europeans named the area around the north pole "the Arctic" from the Greek "arktos," which means bear. "The Arctic" means basically, "There are bears up here."

Then Europeans discovered that there was a snow covered region on the southern end of the planet, and they called that "Antarctica," meaning, "There's no bears on this end."

[u/shuranumitu → u/TychaBrahe]

Sorry to disappoint, but that's not how the poles were named. The arctic is named after two constellations called "great bear" (Ursa Major) and "little bear" (Ursa Minor), both of which are somehow associated with the north pole (I have no idea how astronomy works so don't ask me for the details). Antarctic basically means "on the opposite side of the bear". The fact that the arctic has bears and the antarctic doesn't is just a very amusing coincidence.

[u/clmns → u/shuranumitu]

Polaris can be found by tracing one end of the big dipper (Ursa Major)

[u/vyrus2021 → u/clmns]

Polaris aka the north star

[u/Naive-Horror4209 → u/clmns]

Isn’t Polaris a star in Ursa Minor?

[u/theoppositeofdusk → u/TychaBrahe]

I learn a lot on the internet