Today I Learned (TIL)

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TIL that we don’t know who named the Earth. Unlike other planets there are no records of how it got its name. The name Earth, and variations of it, date back 1000+ years. (www.skyatnightmagazine.com)

submitted 5 months ago by Blaze@reddthat.com to c/til@lemmy.ca

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[–] PineRune@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Earth comes from OE, which comes from Proto-Germanic, which comes from Proto-Indo-European. Seperate from the Latin "Terra".

[–] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

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.