Seven of the eight planets in the solar system are named after Greek or Roman gods, with the exception of Earth.
The truth is that the word “land” is derived from the Old English “eorþe”. Eore has many meanings such as “land”, “land” and “country”. However, the story does not start there.
Old English, the forerunner of modern English, was used until around 1150 CE, it evolved from a family of parent languages known to scholars as “Proto-Germanic”.
Today German is also part of the above language family. Therefore, “Earth” and “eorþe” are related to the modern German word “Erde”. In German, the word “Erde” means earth or earth.
In 1783, German astronomer Johann Elert Bode named the seventh planet from the Sun – Uranus “Uranus” (after a Greek god). And although Pluto is no longer considered a planet, we do know that 11-year-old Venetia Burney named it in 1930.
So who gave the name “Earth” to our planet, or more precisely, who decided to take the word “earth” (which means “earth”) as the name of the planet? Unfortunately, the identity of this person has been forgotten over time, no study has been able to find.
However, it is clear that while Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all started out as the names of ancient gods, “Earth” did not. This is why our planet is sometimes called “earth” without the capital letter “e”.
