Movies are a mass medium. And that gives them one great advantage. That is, being able to heighten the audience’s interest in a particular theme or subject.
After watching previous year’s movie, “Clash of the Titans”, I decided to visit the movie’s imdb page. What struck me interesting was how most fans were objecting to the movie’s incorrect portrayal of Greek Mythology. I knew precious little about Greek mythology and decided to look up some of the movies characters Greek mythological history.
That exercise had an interesting side effect. I just found out how the various planets in the Solar system got their names and being curious enough, I also tried finding where our Planet got the name “Earth” from.
Our Solar system has eight planets (there were nine, when Pluto was a planet, but Pluto was re-categorized as a dwarf planet) and they are in order of proximity to the Sun,
- Mercury
- Venus
- Earth
- Mars
- Jupitor
- Saturn
- Uranus
- Neptune
Most of the planetary names are derived from the names of Roman and Greek Gods and also the relationship between the names of these planets is very interesting.
Mercury derives it’s name after the Roman god Mercury, which the Romans equated with the Greek God Hermes. Venus is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty.
Mars, as one can easily guess, is named after the Roman God of war, Mars which was identified with the Greek god Ares. Now this is where it gets interesting. The Greek God Ares was the son of the all powerful Greek God Zeus. Zeus, in Roman Mythology was named, yes you guessed it right, Jupiter! which is what the next planet in the Solar system was named after.
So now can you guess, whom the other planets are named after?
Saturn, is named after the Roman God Saturn, who was, yes the father of Jupiter. He was identified in classical antiquity with the Greek deity Cronus (father of Zeus).
Upon Discovery of Uranus, one of it’s early observers Berlin astronomer Johann Elert Bode argued that just as Saturn was the father of Jupiter, the new planet should be named after the father of Saturn, who is Uranus in Greek and Roman Mythology.
Interestingly, the eighth and the farthest planet of the solar system got it’s name as Neptune, who was the Roman God of the Seas and brother of Jupiter.
Ok then the question is, how did Earth get it’s name?
The answer is uninteresting here. No one really knows for sure. But to understand the term better we have to realize that in Ancient times the observed world was divided into five elements which were known as Water, Air, Fire, and ‘Earth’. So the term earth which gradually became used for the entire planet quite simply just stood for ‘the ground’, or ‘the opposite of the sea’.
