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EARTHLY ORIGINS

11/23/2016

2 Comments

 
A lot of people wonder where Earth came from and how long it's been around (this is almost as hilarious as my God post). Some may say Earth has been around 5,000 years; they are wrong (I wonder if I'm only funny to myself here?). In truth, it's only been around for about 1,000 years, since Proto-Indo-European had er, or "the ground". This two-letter word then made the miraculous journey into the world of five-letter words, when it evolved into the Proto-Germanic term ertho, because those zany Germans just had to add on some extra letters. From here it was an understandably short journey through a millenium until the word passed from Old English into New English as Earth. Through all this time, it continually referred to "soil" or "the ground" or something along those lines, until around the fourteenth century, where a schism occurred: the old definition was kept, but the Earth also came to mean our planet, because they needed a scientific term for it. Therefore, Earth has been around for a while and undergone some drastic changes (haha).
2 Comments
Ken Bone
11/28/2016 07:42:24 am

Why are the names of the earth moon and sun not Roman gods like the rest of the solar system?

Reply
Adam
11/28/2016 12:04:42 pm

Good question!
The words for "earth", "moon", and "sun" have been around much longer than the planets, because since ancient times those have been utilized, being critical parts of everyday life and pagan religions. The first discovered planet, Uranus, was only found by telescope in the eighteenth century, and for the other solar system planets discovered, people decided to continue the trend of naming them after gods. However, the aforementioned celestial bodies have been around much longer and have carried names prior to this whole god thing.

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    Hello! I'm Adam Aleksic. I have a linguistics degree from Harvard University, where I co-founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society and wrote my thesis on Serbo-Croatian language policy. In addition to etymology, I also really enjoy traveling, trivia, philosophy, board games, conlanging, and art history. 

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