How Earth got its name...

I guess everybody in the country has been snapping Jupiter and Venus over the last few weeks, so I decided that I wouldn’t be any different. Of course I missed them when they were really close together, a combination of cloudy skies and stupidity, but now that we have the crescent moon it remains a sight worth seeing – Venus glowing bright above and Jupiter a tiny spec in the bottom right.

Of course I’ve been watching them as they hang all a glow in the night sky. ‘Planets not stars’ I keep correcting myself and others. Jupiter will be gone soon but Venus is going to hang around for a while I’ve read, and somewhere out there in the eastern evening sky Mars is visible, a bright reddish-orange orb. I’ve not seen it of course, I can’t find my compass to find which way I should be looking and even if I did it would have to be pretty obvious – I’m no astronomer I’m afraid.

Venus, Mars, Jupiter and the rest – the Roman gods of our solar system… and here we are on Earth. I wonder who named the Earth and where the name came from?

Perhaps in the dim and distant past two of our equally dim and distant ancestors got together and perhaps one said “What shall we call this thing we are standing on?” and perhaps the other replied “Errr thingy.” And over the years Errthingy got shortened to Erth and then the French (who very much enjoy their vowels) came along and stuck an ‘a’ in the middle of it to make it a little Frenchier - and voila… Earth!

Yes, that was probably it - the French... I might have guessed it.