Earth Day, 2013: A godly note

Today we celebrate Earth Day, 2013

Earth simply means "the ground" in the Old English from which the term derives.

Of course, it also refers to the third planet from the sun, the one that Eucharistic Prayer C of the Book of Common Prayer refers to as "this fragile earth, our island home."

It is noted that in English the planets of our solar system, with one exception, are named after Greek or Roman gods and goddesses; the exception of course is the Earth (the rules of capitalization of the word earth suggest that the proper name gets capitalized only when it is in the context of other celestial bodies).

Here are the planets of our solar system in order of their distance from the Sun with a note on the origin of their names:

Mercury, after the Roman god of travel and speed;

Venus, after the Roman goddess of love;

Earth, from the Indo-European words for "the ground";

Mars, after the Roman god of war;

Jupiter, the chief Roman god (Zeus to the Greeks, also the highest god);

Saturn, the Roman god of farming (Cronos to the Greeks);

Uranus, the Greek god of the sky;

Neptune, the Roman god of the sea; and

Pluto (recently demoted to a sub-planet, or dwarf planet), the Roman god of the underworld.

Other cultures have other names for the planets.

A most fascinating name for earth comes from ancient Hebrew. One Hebrew word meaning earth is adamah, referring to "the ground." An intriguing word considering the Genesis account of the first man whom God shaped from the dust of the earth and named Adam.