I love that ‘moon’ is written under ‘place.’

  • abbotsbury@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I mean, yeah, many celestial bodies take their names from Latin. Like how the proper name of the sun is Sol, which matches solar, the lunar object would be called Luna. Selene feels like a retronym to match other Greek deities, and would be like renaming Earth to Gaia

    either of those options is a fair pick given their oldness

    Luna would definitely rank over Selene in the Western astronomical tradition. As you say, its name is just The Moon, which is what Luna means in many current day Latin derived languages

    • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org
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      9 months ago

      renaming the Earth, or the Moon

      I’d be totally up with renaming out Tierra and Luna to something that is not eurocentric. Would be a nice change of pace against how much of immediate astronomy is caught up in remixes of Greek and Latin.

      • abbotsbury@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        It’s only Eurocentric in the Western tradition, and even then the names of many stars come from Arabic.