this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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Yes we do know, It comes from the Latin language during the roman empire. Terra which means soil/ground in Latin. it deviated to Terra in italian and portuguese, tierra in spanish and terre in french.
English was influenced by french so they took the meaning of earth from there. The word earth in english comes from old english or irish I dont remember correctly.
Earth comes from OE, which comes from Proto-Germanic, which comes from Proto-Indo-European. Seperate from the Latin "Terra".
Yeah, earth in Dutch is "aarde" and in German it's "erde", which both sound related to "earth".
However, it originally must have meant soil/dirt/land, long before those humans were even aware of the concept of planets. So who was the first to call Earth after earth or Terre after terre? Probably the first persons to figure out that they were living on a planet is my guess, it makes sense to name something after the part that you can see imo.
You're aware the word we're discussing is "Earth" right?
But was Latin the origin or just another step in the process?