this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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TLDR: article is clickbait title, which goes on to explain the etymological origin of the name "Earth" coming from Old English, and other dead languages have other names for Earth such as "Terra".
The oldest possible record for the term "Earth" comes from Proto-Indo-European "Er-", which means ground or soil.
Thanks for correcting.
I was thinking about changing the link and title with this one, is it better? https://sciencenotes.org/how-did-earth-get-its-name/
I like how this article ends up describing the difference between naming Earth as opposed to other planets and the more in-depth etymological explenations of all the names.
Sorry, I find etymology interesting, and the original post caught my attention, so I felt compelled to point a few things out.
But that doesn't explain how we treated to call this planet by the name we give to dirt. We could have called the earth "rocks" or "sand" instead, but no. When did we realise we are sitting on a floating ball of dirt?
The dirt is what makes plants grow, which is kinda important to people of all cultures.
OK, but that doesn't answer my question of how it became the name of the planet.
Rough approximation: Earth as opposed to sky, becomes earth as opposed to sea, becomes earth as in the known world as opposed to the places we don't settle (sea, sky, hell, etc.), becomes the place we live as opposed to Mars or Betelgeuse.
We walk on dirt, we live on dirt, we live on Dirt.
That's a pretty good and likely summary, thanks!
I don't know why in sci-fi or other fiction, I love it when they use Terra. Not sure why I find that more believable.