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Thread: Why is Planet Earth called Earth?

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  1. #1
    Senior Member Senior Member Red Peasant's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why is Planet Earth called Earth?

    Quote Originally Posted by ian_of_smeg16
    We got Humans from the latin name for our species Homonids, human is just homonid in English...I think

    The Latin word for human being is homo, which is the root of words like humanitas, humaniter, humane, to describe human-like qualities.
    So no, a homo is not necessarily gay! Anyway, the homo in homosexual is a different derivation, from Greek.
    Dum spiro spero

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  2. #2
    Master of Few Words Senior Member KukriKhan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why is Planet Earth called Earth?

    The word Earth has cognates in many modern as well as defunct - including ancient - languages. Examples in modern tongues include aarde in Dutch, Erde in German, and aard in Arabic, all of which mean 'land', or in some cases, the entire earth. The root also has cognates in extinct languages such as ertha in Old Saxon and ert (meaning 'ground') in Middle Irish. It is derived from Old English eorðe. Taking into account metathesis, we can find cognates of the word Earth in the Latin terra and in the modern Romance Languages (i.e. tierra in Spanish).

    Although a link to such Indo-European languages has not been proved, several Semitic languages have similar-sounding words for Earth: irtsitu in Assyrian, araa in Aramaic, erets in Phoenician (which appears in the Mesha Stele), and ארץ (arets, or erets when followed by a noun modifier) in Hebrew.
    From a Wikipedia article - extracted from an OED entry. So I guess when Adam fell down one time, and got a mouthful of dirt, his explanation to Eve was "Ur-t-t-t". :)
    Last edited by KukriKhan; 01-16-2006 at 02:12.
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