Who named the planets?
The brightest planets in the sky have been named from ancient times. The scientific names are taken from the names given by the Romans; Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Our own planet is usually named the Earth, or the equivalent in the language being spoken (for instance, two astronomers speaking French would call it la Terre). However, it is only recently in human history that it has been thought of as a planet. The Earth, when viewed as a planet, is sometimes also called by its Latin name Terra (some older science fiction uses the alternate Tellus). At least two more bodies were discovered later, and called planets: • Uranus, discovered by William Herschel in 1781 • Neptune, discovered by Johann Gottfried Galle in 1846 (based on predictions by Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams) All of these planets were given names from Greek or Roman myth, to match the ancient planet names. However, this was only after some controversy. For example, Sir William Herschel discovered Ura
The story behind the names of the planets was written long ago by early stargazers — the first astronomers to focus attention on the sun, the moon, and the visible planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They believed that each of these celestial bodies influenced a particular day of the week. Diverse cultures ascribed the names of their gods to individual planets (with the notable exception of Earth). The Romans matched planetary attributes with particular deities and named the known planets accordingly. Tiny Mercury was named after the fleet-footed messenger to the gods, probably because it moves so quickly across the sky; V
