Why does the Moon not have a name like the other natural satellites in the solar system?
Well it has to do with a number of reasons and its mainly historic. You see, during the time of Galileo, the majority view was that the Earth was the center of the universe and the Sun Moon and Planets went around the Earth. No one knew that other planets had satellites (moons) or the Sun can have satellites (planets). The word “Gravity” was not yet invented and the sun, moon and planets went around the Earth because they were attached to transparent crystal spheres. When Galileo pointed his newly made telescope at Jupiter, he discovered 4 satellites, and there was 1 around Saturn (Titan) at the time. So to distinguish those moons from our “Moon” (Luna, Lunar…) which was the only one known at the time, those moons have names and ours don’t!
The Moon (capital M). The word moon (lower case m) is used by analogy to describe satellites of other planets. In the same way, it us our Sun, which is comparable to many of the “suns” we see out there. Our Galaxy was long thought to be be only one, until we discovered other galaxies. Our Galaxy is often called the Milky Way galaxy; ethymologically, the Milky Way is the band of light (collective glow of stars too faint to be seen individually) that is visible from Earth; it only represents two arms of the spiral galaxy. But the name is precise enough that no one gets confused.
