Expert: Ed - 3/16/2005

Question
Can you help me?

I have emailed the following questions to people who should know the answers, i.e. a Professor at Cambridge Univ and to the head people at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire and numerous others.

However, they have not replied to my emails.

I was hoping that you may be able to help, or direct me to a site or person that can.

Please, if you don't know the answer I would be grateful if you would let me know.

My questions are:

1. With the planets in our solar system being named after Greek Gods,
Who named the Earth, Earth and what does earth mean?

2. When was the Earth first recorded officially as being the Earth?

3. What was Earth called before it was called Earth and who called it Earth?

Do you think these are 64 million dollar questions?

Hope you can help me.

Kind regards
Terry Campbell


Answer
Terry,
Hello!  Rather than asking astronomers, you need to look in the Oxford English Dictionary.  I am cut-and-pasting the definition from the online OED:

[Common Teut.: OE. eore, wk. fem., corresponds to OS. ertha wk. fem. (MDu. aerde, erde, Du. aarde), OHG. erda str. and wk. fem. (MHG., mod.G. erde), ON. ir (Sw., Da. jord), Goth. aira str. fem.:OTeut. *erâ, (? WGer.) erôn-; without the dental suffix the word appears in OHG. ero earth, Gr. - on the ground; no other non-Teutonic cognates are known to exist, the plausible connexion with WAryan root *ar, to plough, being open to serious objection.

Don't freak out by the dictionary's use of words like "Aryan" and "Teutonic."  They had absolutely no racial, Nazi connotations when the dictionary was compiled, in the early decades of the 20th century.  They simply refer to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.

Basically, the word "Earth" seems to have begun in ancient times among the Proto-Germanic people of northern Europe.  It is found in "Beowulf," which is just about the oldest substantial text written in Old English.

To answer your questions as best I can:

1.)Early Germanic tribes of northern Europe used the word "Earth" for the ground, and eventually, by extension, it came to be applied to what civilization gradually understood to be our home planet.  The word means what you know it to mean, that is, the place, not heaven, where men dwell.

2.)Hmmm, this is a little outside my expertise.  Ancient Roman authors employed the Latin term "Terra," as you probably know.  In the Middle Ages, the English-speaking world probably used the word "terra" in religious contexts for a long time, but at some point the word "Earth" took over.  I'll try to research this more, but I can't make any promises.  If you'd like to get back to me in a few weeks, I'll tell you any new information that I may have been able to dig up.

3.)I guess I answered your third question already...  Bear in mind that Earth is an old word, dating back to pre-literate, pre-historic times for the ancestors of the tribes which first spoke the languages which grew into today's Germanic tongues: German, English, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Faeroese, and Frisian (few people have heard of Frisian, at least in America where I live, but it's considered the nearest relative to English).

In the days when the ancestors of these people spoke Proto-Germanic, the Romans were calling the Earth Terra, and the Greeks were calling it Gaia.  At that time, the speakers ofProto-Germanic were barbarians, so no self-respecting Roman or Greek cared what they called it.

I hope this is helpful.  Let me know if you'd like more of my thoughts.

Keep Looking Up!
--Ed