Why is Earth's moon still named just "The Moon" (and our sun still named "The Sun")

bug_of_war

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The Crotch said:
bug_of_war said:
Sol and Luna are the Latin names, just like Sonne is the German name for sun, Soleil is the French name for sun, Ghrian for the Irish etc. Basically, they all mean the same thing, but have different spellings. Suck it up, stop being a neckbeard (OP) and to those saying Sol and Luna, remember that Latin words are not always the one true and proper name for things. Latin just sounds cool and Sciency
I love the fact that there was so much god damn nonsense up ins that you had to register just to say that.

If we were in the same room right now I would high five you, make you a delicious-ass motherfucking protein shake, and ask if you wanted me to spot you.
*Bro fist*

I would totally High five you back. I had to because it's annoying seeing some people say "Sol and Lunar are not the proper terms" and then having people completely disregard it because Mass Effect or Star Trek said so. And because the question was just so damn pretentious. Can we not just call a wrench a wrench.
 

Russian_Assassin

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lacktheknack said:
Because it's the only one of each that really effects us.

If it really pisses you off, then start calling them Sol and Luna, then consider seeing a psychiatrist.
I don't get it, why should he see a psychiatrist? I can call the sun Omellete of Sector 5/ Zyrithian if I want to. Does that mean I should immediately be subjected to mind homogenizing medication?

So, forgetting teh rOOlez here... I don't think it matters what we call them. They are massive collections of energy that make up celestial bodies which play a colossal role in our very existence. It is up to you to call them what you want.
 

MrFalconfly

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Vuliev said:
But yes, their actual names are Luna and Sol, respectively; people are just lazy/know which star or moon is being referred to.
Unfortunately you're wrong. I used to think Sol was the actual name of our sun, and Luna for moon, but apparently not. Only in Star Trek and other similar science fiction universes are they referred to as such. Obviously those are the first candidates if we were to ever give them a more unique name, but ultimately it's not much better because those are still just the words "sun" and "moon" in a different (albeit dead) language.


[/quote]

Incorrect.

Luna and Sol are the proper names of those objects.

The only reason they might be used more in Scifi is because the author needs to distinguish our solar-system or our local star from all the other solar systems and suns out there.

Else the reason we usually call them Sun and Moon (or in my native language Sol and Måne) is because well they have a much larger impact on out daily lives than say the Neptunian moon of Triton (btw. Did you know that all the moons of Uranus isn't named after anything in Greek mythology, but names of Characters in the plays of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope?).
 

Ieyke

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Their proper formal names ARE actually "Sol" and "Luna".
"The Sun" and "The Moon" are their common names because they are the first and most important of their kind that mankind became aware of.
All terminology regarding our star and moon are referred to in Solar and Lunar terms deriving from their proper names, despite technical science referring to them by their common names for simplicity's sake.
 

blackrave

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Well, "sun" is easy because everything else is a "star" ("sun" is also a "star" though)
Moon is a moon because people are lazy and/or dumb
Luna and Sol would be first candidates if we ever ventured outside our planet far enough, and needed to name them
Also when we'll inevitably make contact with some other alien lifeforms, maybe we could take their name for our solar system
Unless it something demeaning or even insulting (and that would be somewhat funny- the stinky shisno system :) )
 

Nonomori

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The proper names are really Sol and Luna? Well, that's not just "Latin" or "dead languages".

In Portuguese, Sun is Sol, Moon is Lua, Earth is Terra. I don't know much about others latin american languages, but Moon is "Luna" in Spanish. Doesn't sound too fancy when thousands of people talk like that all the time.
 

Olas

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The Crotch said:
Well, damn. Horses and water and all that, I guess.

Alright. Ganymede and Titan and Europa and I guess Alpha Centauri and all those others, those would be the "other children" in your analogy, yeah? Your analogy breaks down because for a long damn time, nobody knew those existed or could exist. There's nothing wrong with naming your son "The Son" and your daughter "The Daughter" if those are the only two children in existence and you know of no way to make more.
It would still be weird to name them "The Son", and "The Daughter" if that's their actual name and not a label. You wouldn't name a child "The David" or "The Emily". It would just be "Son" and "Daughter". It's obvious from the syntax that even back then those weren't their names, it was just what they were. And I don't care what we knew back then, I care about what we know right now.

The Crotch said:
And there's nothing wrong with saying "the moon" or "the sun" if, as far as everyone ever is concerned, those are the only sun and moon in existence, and we will never find any more. Celestial bodies had names many millennia before we had any god damn idea what they were. As someone else said, you could argue that it might be a bit silly that we would call every other natural satellite a moon and every other star orbited by planets a sun, but... eh, fuck, whatever.
Exactly, you see the sillyness of this finally. If we're going to start calling every star with a system a "sun" then the word is a noun referring to a certain type of star. Continuing to have our sun be named "The Sun" after that is retarded and you know it.

The Crotch said:
The idea that the sun is a star and other planets are actually planets took a long damn time to gain any ground, and it took even longer for people to figure out what that meant (and even longer for people to notice that those other planets had moons; Mars' phobos and deimos weren't discovered until the late 19th century). Hell, ever heard the name Giordano Bruno? Dude got burned at the stake in the 16th century for saying that other stars could have their own planets orbiting them. I repeat, in 16th century Italy, suggesting that other stars are actually suns was grounds for death by being lit on fire.

Are we clear on the failings of that analogy now?
well, when I created the analogy I wasn't concerned with the history of those names. I wasn't focusing on the temporal aspect of it. I was using it to show why it's stupid to refer to your X as "The X". As far as I'm concerned, what we called them 200 years ago is irrelevant.

So I still think it's a good analogy thank you very much.

After we learned that Pluto was actually one of many large masses of it's size and orbit type we changed it's title to "dwarf planet" to account for our changing perspective on the solar system. Obviously that's a different kind of change, but it shows that we're willing to adapt our language to account for new information we gather about the universe.

It's called progress my friend, don't fight it tooth and nail.
 

Olas

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MrFalconfly said:
Incorrect.

Luna and Sol are the proper names of those objects.

Okay, could somebody please tell me where everybody keeps getting this idea that "Sol" and "Luna" are the official names of these things? I've looked it up in several places and every source is telling me the same thing.

http://earthsky.org/space/what-is-the-suns-name

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=155

http://www.universetoday.com/18701/name-of-the-sun/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun

http://www.accessscience.com/studycenter.aspx?main=3&questionID=701

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=289

MrFalconfly said:
(btw. Did you know that all the moons of Uranus isn't named after anything in Greek mythology, but names of Characters in the plays of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope?).
Actually I did, Titania, Oberon, and Puck are all characters from A Mid Summer Night's Dream which I had to read in high school. Though I never made the connection that Miranda was from The Tempest though. And I'm less familiar with the names of Uranus' other moons.
 

MrFalconfly

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OlasDAlmighty said:
MrFalconfly said:
Incorrect.

Luna and Sol are the proper names of those objects.

Okay, could somebody please tell me where everybody keeps getting this idea that "Sol" and "Luna" are the official names of these things? I've looked it up in several places and every source is telling me the same thing.

http://earthsky.org/space/what-is-the-suns-name

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=155

http://www.universetoday.com/18701/name-of-the-sun/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun

http://www.accessscience.com/studycenter.aspx?main=3&questionID=701

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=289

MrFalconfly said:
(btw. Did you know that all the moons of Uranus isn't named after anything in Greek mythology, but names of Characters in the plays of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope?).
Actually I did, Titania, Oberon, and Puck are all characters from A Mid Summer Night's Dream which I had to read in high school. Though I never made the connection that Miranda was from The Tempest though. And I'm less familiar with the names of Uranus' other moons.
I actually explained that.

The reason those names are used in Sci Fi is because the author wants (or think he/she needs) to distinguish our celestial objects (solarsystem which in 40k is called Sol system because solarsystem is used to describe any star with planetary objects in orbit) from every other celestial object.

Again. Sol and Luna are the proper Latin names. They just aren't used that often.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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When those were named nobody thought there would be others. Until alot later when astronomers looked more closely at the sky. No point renaming the Moon and Sun as it would mess up all the astronomy books. :)
 

n00beffect

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newfoundsky said:
The best reason I can think of is because they are the most important things in the sky.
Agreed.

I mean, yeah, why do you call your parents 'mom' and 'dad'? There are plenty other moms and dads out there, it doesn't make sense... Oh no, wait, yes it does.

And science probably calls it that way for convenience's sake.
 

jklinders

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We call them that because we call them that. Much like anything else that is named. The Sun and the Moon were the first bodies of their type to be observed by us and remain the most important bodies in our heavens. They by both those auspices earned the appellation, The Sun, and The Moon.

As for what aliens think about this if they show up and we are civil enough with them to have a polite chat...who cares. I am certain they would have their own idiosyncrasies that we would find amusing.

It doesn't bother me and I really don't see any reason why it should. Names are a label. These names do a fine job of labelling these objects. No one says, "what moon" or "What sun" when you say "the Moon," or "the Sun" so this only proves teh label they are given works fine.

Why fuck with that?
 

MammothBlade

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Because they're by far the most prominent objects in the night sky from Earth. Though they have no "official" names, The Earth can be called Terra (or Gaea but that's my term for nature), the moon Luna, and the Sun Sol (Latin) or Helios (Greek).
 

Olas

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Dimitriov said:
OlasDAlmighty said:
See the real problem isn't that we named our planet's single natural satellite the "moon" or our system's primary the "sun" (see what I did there?). No, the real problem is that we started using those names, the unique names our ancestors gave those objects, to refer to other stars and satellites...

THAT is the dumb part, and it happened much more recently than what you are asking about :D
Okay, I'll accept that.

The only problem I see there is that, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I believe we still referred to them as the sun, and the moon back then. If so, the "the" seems to imply that that was already just a generic label and not an actual name.
Just like how we don't have a name for the universe right now. It's just "the universe". Universe isn't it's name per se, it's what it is. There can be other "universes".
So if sun and moon were just labels and not actual names then it does seem natural to call all similar objects suns and moons as well.

In which case it's the original sun and moon that should stop being lazy and get real names of their own.

But if we did start calling all natural satellites "Goomaluchas" and all stars with planets "Baginvorches" I'd be happy with that as well.
 
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That is what they are called. If anyone calls something except the natural satellite orbiting our planet a moon they are kinda wrong it is not a moon as there is only one Moon. Also Sol is one of the names given to the star in our planetary system that is why it is called the Solar System. There is only 1 Solar system and you're in it. So yes if you speak English that natural satellite on Earth is called Moon and the star at the heart of our planetary system is Sun. Just most people use the Moon, etc because maybe it sounds more natural.
 

Unsilenced

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I forgot where I heard it, but there was some or another sci-fi story I read where a character basically said that you couldn't translate an alien race's word for their home planet because if you did it would almost always translate to some equivalent of "Earth." Seems plausible.


Also, I'm pretty sure "Sun" refers specifically to the star at the center of the Solar System. Likewise, calling orbiting satellites "moons" is naming them after our Moon, not the other way around.

According to wikipedia, even the term "Solar System" refers specifically to ours. A set of planets orbiting around a different star is called a planetary system.



Captcha: "science class"
 

Jfswift

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We should name our planet, "Dirt" while we're at it. Haha, I've never actually thought about that before but it's a really good point, why is our derpy moon, just called, "Moon". That is pretty lame.