The first to name planets in the Solar System were the Sumerians, people who occupied the region of Mesopotamia (now Iraq) 5,000 years ago. They had already identified five «stars» that moved in the sky, while the others remained still, and they believed they were gods. According to the characteristics of each one, they gained names related to the deities.
Centuries later, the Romans adapted the names of the planets according to their own deities. The five stars of the Sumerians were given new names: Enki, who moved the fastest, was named after Mercury, the swift messenger of the gods. Venus, the goddess of beauty, named the brightest of stars, Inanna. The red Gugalanna, the color of blood, was named after Mars, god of war. Enlil, the greatest, was called Jupiter, the Latin name of Zeus, lord of Olympus. Ninurta, the slowest of all, whose movement was only perceived by the most patient, was named after Saturn, the god of time.
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Earth’s name comes from ancient Latin. At the time, the word already had the same meanings as it does today: soil, ground, territory. In Roman mythology, the Earth was represented by the goddess Gaia, linked to fertility. The other three planets were discovered relatively recently. Uranus, discovered in 1781, was named after the Greco-Roman god who represented the sky. Neptune, first seen in 1846, was named after the Roman god of the oceans.
The most distant planet of all, Pluto, discovered in 1930, was almost named Percival, a suggestion made by the wife of astronomer Percival Lowell, who had predicted the planet’s existence in 1915. It was the English student Venetia Burney, then 11 years old. , who suggested to researchers that the star be named after the Roman god of the dead. In 2006, Pluto was downgraded to a dwarf planet.