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Oct 15, 2019 · The modern name “earth” is believed to be at least 1,000 years old. Initially, the Anglo-Saxons elected to name the earth “erda.” Anglo-Saxons were a people of Germanic origin who conquered and occupied Great Britain in the 5 th century.
- Ferdinand Bada
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering 70.8% of Earth's crust.
Its name, according to the official gazetteer of planetary discovery, comes from the Indo-European base 'er', which produced the Germanic noun 'ertho', the modern German 'erde', Dutch 'aarde', Danish and Swedish 'jord', and English 'earth'.
It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous approximately 335 million years ago, and began to break apart about 200 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic and beginning of the Jurassic. [3]
- Namesake. The name Earth is at least 1,000 years old. All of the planets, except for Earth, were named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. However, the name Earth is a Germanic word, which simply means “the ground.”
- Potential for Life. Earth has a very hospitable temperature and mix of chemicals that have made life abundant here. Most notably, Earth is unique in that most of our planet is covered in liquid water, since the temperature allows liquid water to exist for extended periods of time.
- Size and Distance. With an equatorial diameter of 7926 miles (12,760 kilometers), Earth is the biggest of the terrestrial planets and the fifth largest planet in our solar system.
- Orbit and Rotation. As Earth orbits the Sun, it completes one rotation every 23.9 hours. It takes 365.25 days to complete one trip around the Sun. That extra quarter of a day presents a challenge to our calendar system, which counts one year as 365 days.
Pangea, supercontinent that incorporated almost all of Earth’s landmasses in early geologic time. Fully assembled by the Early Permian Epoch (some 299 million to about 273 million years ago), it began to break apart about 200 million years ago, eventually forming the modern continents and the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
For example, the modern English word ‘Earth’ derives from the Germanic ‘erde’, meaning ‘ground’. The roots of such words all date from a time when humankind was unaware that Earth is actually a planet. They merely signified the ground beneath our feet, and were adopted for the planet later on.
