Moon question

Why does the human race have no name for the moon. Every other planet through out the solar system has a name, but our little ball of dirt has uuuh the moon. Is there a name for the moon I don't know about, or if not, CONTEST TIME. Anybody anywhere give your best names.

The moon is also known as Luna..Im pretty sure there are other names for the moon. Plus i bet the 'moon' does stand for something.

We have a name for our moon -- it's "the Moon" (with a capital "M"). "The Moon" is a proper noun and the official name. The word "moon" (with a lower-case "m") refers to planets' natural satellites.

The proper noun "Moon" was used for centuries as the name of our moon way before humans discovered that other moons do exist, which was in the 1600s. That's when Galileo discovered the four main moons of Jupiter. It wasn't until then that people used the word "moon" to describe other natural satellites.

Therefore the proper name "Moon" came before the general term "moon".

Some people refer to it as "Luna", but that is not the official name recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is the body that officially names celestial objects.


[edit on 9/30/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

Our Moon has three names.
Luna.
Selene.
Artemis.
My fav is Artemis.

reply to post by RyanLA123


There are lots of different names for the Moon. Most of the alternatives that have been given come from Greece or Rome. There are many other languages and cultures of course:

Planetary Linguistics

It's much the same as with the Sun. Obviously, there are other suns in the universe, we just refer to ours with a capital. The proper name for the sun being Sol. Its an odd thing linguistically.