Keith Wilson has had a lifelong interest in the night sky and has written for space and astronomy publications in both the UK and USA. He lives under the dark night skies of the Isle of Gigha.
The planets of our Solar System have been highlighted several times in ‘Seeing Stars’ over the past year and hopefully readers have gone out and tried to spot the five naked eye planets in our night sky. But have you ever wondered how they got their names?
The ancient Greeks called the planet Stilbōn, meaning ‘twinkling’, and Hermes for its fleeting motion.
The Romans knew of seven bright objects in the sky: the Sun, the Moon, and the five brightest planets which they named after their most important gods.
Because Mercury was the fastest planet as it moved around the Sun, it was named after the Roman messenger god Mercury.
In ancient times, Venus was known to the Babylonians as Ishtar, the goddess of womanhood and love, so the planet has a long standing tradition of being associated with love.
In ancient cultures, Venus was also called ‘Lucifer’ or ‘light-bearer,’ a name that became associated with Satan. However the name that stuck was Venus, named after the Roman Goddess of Love.
The name Earth comes from the Anglo-Saxon name ‘erda’ which simply means the ground.
The name Earth is at least 1000 years old. Humans at that time were unaware that Earth was actually a planet so they just used the term for the ground beneath their feet and this was adopted for the planet at a later date. It’s unlikely that a single person gave the planet its name.
People in ancient times used the Moon to measure the passing of the months so the word Moon can be traced to the Old English word, ‘mōna’.
The word come from the Latin words ‘metri’ which means to measure, and ‘mensis’ which means month. So, the Moon is called the Moon because it was used to measure the months.
The red planet. The ancient Egyptians dubbed Mars ‘Horus of the Horizon’, often depicted as a falcon, he was an Egyptian sky god, symbolizing the pharaoh.
The Babylonians who were expert astronomers called Mars ‘Nergal,’ their god of war and the ruler of the underworld.
The ancient Greeks named the planet Ares after their god of war. When the Romans took the helm from the Greeks, they translated the planet’s name to Mars, which is the Roman equivalent of Ares.
In both the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations, Jupiter was named after the chief god of the pantheon – Zeus to the Greeks and Jupiter to the Romans.
According to Roman mythology, Saturn was the god who taught the Roman people how to sow the land with seeds and grow crops.
He was also the god of time. Saturn orbits the Sun the slowest of all the naked eye planets, so its name was given as a tribute to the ancient god of time and seasons.
The Greeks called it Kronos, and the Egyptians associated it with their god of time, Osiris.
The planet was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1781 although some astronomers had viewed it earlier but hadn’t classified it as a planet.
It was originally named Georgian Sidus, meaning ‘George’s Star’, in honour of King George III.
The name Uranus was first proposed by German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in keeping with the other planetary names which are from classical mythology.
Uranus is the ancient Greek deity of the heavens.
Galileo likely observed Neptune but didn’t realise it was a planet. It was eventually discovered by Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier using mathematical calculations of orbits.
Having suggested Neptune as the planet’s name after the Roman god of the sea, Le Verrier then decided to name it after himself.
This suggestion met with stiff resistance outside France so Neptune became the internationally accepted name.
Pluto was regarded as a planet up until 2006 when it was demoted to being a dwarf planet. However, it has an interesting naming story.
It was discovered in 1930 by American Clyde Tombaugh. A competition was held to name the then planet and an 11-year-old English girl, Venetia Burney, of Oxford, suggested that the newly discovered planet be named for the Roman god of the underworld, Pluto. Her grandfather forwarded the name and it was selected. Venetia won £5.
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