Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Laura Vogelbaum. Here, the planets of our Solar system are bright,
Speaker 1: mobile points of light in our night sky, and we
Speaker 1: humans have thus been fascinated by them for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: Ancient peoples all over the world noticed that these objects
Speaker 1: shine like stars, but move differently, seemingly wandering through different constellations.
Speaker 1: But we now know that this isn't really mysterious. It's
Speaker 1: because the planets are in orbit around our Sun and
Speaker 1: real stars aren't. Still, our word planet comes from an
Speaker 1: ancient Greek term meaning wanderer. Ancient Greeks named the five
Speaker 1: brightest planets those that can be seen with the naked
Speaker 1: eye for their dominant attributes. They then assigned each one
Speaker 1: as being sacred to or part of the domain of
Speaker 1: a coordinating god of their pantheon. A side note, the
Speaker 1: Greeks possibly borrowed this from Babylonian associations with the planets,
Speaker 1: but it's complicated at any rate. That is how a
Speaker 1: large bright planet was connected with Zeus, the king of
Speaker 1: the gods. The brightest was given to Aphrodite, a goddess
Speaker 1: of love and beauty. The red one to Ares, the
Speaker 1: god of war, and the fastest to Hermes, the fleet
Speaker 1: footed messenger of the gods. The slowest moving planet seen,
Speaker 1: perhaps as Stately, was associated with Chronos, a father of Zeus.
Speaker 1: The ancient Romans borrowed a lot from the Greeks, including
Speaker 1: their mythology and the association of the planets with certain gods,
Speaker 1: though the Romans sort of skipped the middleman and named
Speaker 1: those planets directly for the Roman versions of those gods,
Speaker 1: and because the Romans language Blatin was the lingua franca
Speaker 1: of European science long after the fall of the Empire,
Speaker 1: those names stuck in most European languages, with the few
Speaker 1: variations on spelling and pronunciation, which is how we arrived
Speaker 1: in English at kingly Jupiter, bright, Venus, red Mars, quick Mercury,
Speaker 1: and stately Saturn. A scientist's discovered telescopes throughout these sixteen
Speaker 1: and seventeen hundreds, leading to the discovery of two new planets.
Speaker 1: After some argument, astronomers agreed to roll with the ancient
Speaker 1: naming convention, thus giving us Uranus, which is a Latinized
Speaker 1: version of the Greek god of the sky, and Neptune
Speaker 1: with its blue tint named for the Roman god of
Speaker 1: the sea, and whether you consider Pluto a true planet
Speaker 1: or not, you can see our episode about that for more.
Speaker 1: It was named for the Roman god of the underworld,
Speaker 1: given its existence out in the cold, dark reaches of
Speaker 1: the Solar System. The name was suggested in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: by an English schoolgirl of Venetia, Bernie. Urban legends say
Speaker 1: that she named the planet after the dog Pluto from
Speaker 1: Walt Disney's Making Mount cartoons, but it seems to be
Speaker 1: the other way around. A Disney's cartoon Pooch went by
Speaker 1: Rover until nineteen thirty one, when his name was switched
Speaker 1: to Pluto. All of this means that of the planets
Speaker 1: in our Solar System, Earth is the only one in
Speaker 1: most European languages not named from Greek or Roman mythology.
Speaker 1: So where did the name Earth come from? The short
Speaker 1: answer is that the word earth just means the ground.
Speaker 1: That's what the name for our planet means in pretty
Speaker 1: much every language. Earth specifically, is a term for the
Speaker 1: ground that we've been using with a few sound and
Speaker 1: spelling modifications since the earliest recorded form of English about
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago. Old English borrowed it from a
Speaker 1: Proto Germanic term that also gave rise to modern German
Speaker 1: and Dutch words for our planet. All of these may
Speaker 1: root from a term for the ground in what's called
Speaker 1: proto Indo European, a hypothetical common ancest of all of
Speaker 1: the Indo European languages that was spoken at least four
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. Other European languages use Latin roots like
Speaker 1: terra meaning the land or mundus meaning the universe, and
Speaker 1: even totally unrelated languages like Mandarin use words that mean
Speaker 1: the land, all of which makes sense. We didn't understand
Speaker 1: Earth to be a planet like Jupiter or Mars until
Speaker 1: around the fifteen hundreds, so before then we were just
Speaker 1: talking about the ground beneath our feet, and again those
Speaker 1: names more or less stuck. By the way, Earth is
Speaker 1: sometimes spelled with a lowercase E, which indicates that you're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, actual dirt or land. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about the planet as a whole, it is a
Speaker 1: proper noun, and thus capital e Earth as a sign
Speaker 1: of respect for this glorious dirt ball that gives us life.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article who named Planet
Speaker 1: Earth on HowStuffWorks? Dot com written by Mark Mancini. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot com and it is produced by Tyler Klang.
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