Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 March 18

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March 18

Japanese name check #6

Is 高屋 未央, Takaya Miou or Miou Takaya, Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 21:00, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

The first two kanji in the order given, left to right, read "Takaya", (='high household'), Graham Hardy. --ColinFine (talk) 21:31, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Takaya is the surname, Graham Hardy. Within Japanese conversation, her name is "Takaya Miō". en:WP would normally write such a name as "Miō Takaya"; however, she seems to be referred to in English as "Takaya Miou". The current "[[Category:Manga artists|Miou, Takaya]]" is plain wrong; I'm about to fix this. -- Hoary (talk) 23:13, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

What proper names has this planet had besides [word for soil] and [word for land]?

Is [word for ground] or [word for rock or stone] also popular? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:41, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

There's the old standard Terra firma. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:29, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

And the history of "terra firma".[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:31, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure the planet itself has ever been called "terra firma", as distinct from just "Terra". Sure, one can land on "terra firma" from the sea or the air, but that's a reference to just the land portion of the planet, not the entire planet. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:06, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Wiktionary gives Sol III (third planet from the sun). Jmar67 (talk) 23:33, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Then there's the TV show 3rd Rock from the Sun. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:39, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

The Lensman series uses the name Tellus for the Earth. I've not seen it used anywhere else. --ColinFine (talk) 23:49, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Tellus is from the Latin and refers either to the goddess or to territory; and it may refer to the soil. Other ancient names for Earth and associated with deities are Ki, Gi, and Gaia. Tamanoeconomico (talk) 00:18, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Midgard. Matt Deres (talk) 00:30, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

That's a good one! But apparently it means something like "middle garden", so not really that different from "soil" or "land". --Trovatore (talk) 02:15, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Gaia.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 16:22, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Add to Tamanoeconomico's list Hades. 2A00:23C5:840F:1F01:E522:CAD9:682B:BB7A (talk) 16:30, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Prithvi, "the Vast One". According to wiktionary's etymology of the Sanskrit word पृथ्वी: 'From Proto-Indo-Aryan *pr̥tʰwíH, from Proto-Indo-Iranian *pr̥tʰwíH, from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥th₂-éwih₂ (“country”), from *pléth₂us (“flat, broad”).' I guess there's a relation to "land" or "country", but they're not quite the same. The article on Bhūmi lists a number of alternative names possibly worth checking for etymology and meaning. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:48, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Also Dünya, the Turkish word for Earth, derived from Arabic دنيا where دُنيَا originally meant "the lower place" or "the nearer place" or this world, as in this mortal world. See also Dunya. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:54, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

In English there's 'the World' and 'the Globe'. Tellus is also used in Swedish. In Latin it evidently just meant 'ground', as opposed to terra '(dry) land'. Gaia is just Greek for the same -- the gods/personifications of the Earth are generally just called 'Earth'. Midgard, BTW, is probably better translated 'the Middle Realm',, gard is 'enclosure', only later specifically a yard or a garden. 'Middle Earth' is the direct English form, which the OED describes as a 'perversion' of 'middle-erd'. (original ȝeard 'fence, yard, dwelling' > eard 'dwelling, native land' > earð 'earth, land' -- three different roots which got confused with each other.)

But I suppose you mean in other languages? Lots of languages use something like 'the World', such as Irish Domhan. In Ainu it's evidently aynu-mosir 'the land of humans', which in meaning would parallel names like Midgard and Dunya. The ASL sign indicates a globe--interesting that it doesn't parallel English. Danish too use klode 'globe', and Chinese/Japanese 地球 dìqiú/chikyū ('earth orb') was evidently a direct translation of the Latin orbis terrarum by Matteo Ricci. Sanskrit prithvī evidently is 'earth' as one of the four elements, as opposed to just 'land' or 'ground', and is used for Mother Earth. I don't know Sanskrit, but is looks like bhū, which is also used, still has the old meaning of 'to be', and has multiple meanings (place, ground, Middle Earth, space, world, etc.)

But knowledge that the Earth is a planet is what, just 500 years old? And essentially theoretical until the Space Age? So distinctions between our planet and 'the world' are not very robust. — kwami (talk) 02:52, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

That depends on how precise of a definition one uses for 'planet'. Planetary orbits were not well understood until Kepler, but knowledge of a spherical earth goes back about 2500 years. The ancient Greeks were divided as to heliocentrism and geocentrism, but they were definitely aware of the shape and approximate size of the Earth. - Lindert (talk) 08:37, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

But did they think of the planets as being like earth? Even with heliocentrism you have to make the leap that not only do earth and the planets all orbit the sun, but that the planets are in some way like earth. It's not just that the world (Earth) is also a planet, but also that the planets are also worlds. --Khajidha (talk) 13:48, 20 March 2019 (UTC)