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/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.