Things to think about

I was thinking the other day... about the Moon.

I realized just how stupid it was that that our moon is the only moon in our solar system that is not named.

Why is that?

As of 2008, there were 172 known moons orbiting planets in our universe. They all have names. Names like Phobos, Aoede, Lo, and SI2003_J_23. One hundred seventy-two names. Many not pronounceable. Ours does not have a name. We just call it "Moon."

So, why doesn't our moon have a real name? I know some may think that lunar may be a name, but it is really reserved for adjective or adverb use like lunar-storm or lunar-eclipse. For use like: "he went lunar" or 'he got lunar faced'. Lunar is more like what our moon does other than what it is.

Moon. the noun that refers to our moon. What is that?

Now get this. The reason why we call it "Moon" is that in 1665 when they discovered other satellites around other planets, the guys who did the discovering sat around a camp fire drinking wine and were talking about these satellites and one of them said: "Hey! we are going to get confused with all the moons we found. When Galileo here says 'moon', I can't tell if he is talking about that satellite around Jupiter or the one on Earth here. We need to do something to clear up this confusion."

So, being the great thinkers of their time (keep in mind they were drinking wine), they decided to name all the other moons they found and not name ours. They invented Phobos, Lo, Aoede and kept the word 'moon' to refer to our Moon.

Well, DUH!

They could have just as easily named our moon" 'Gal", "Gork", or even 'LOOK"! But no they had to keep on referring it as 'Moon'. Or they could have just as easily gave them numbers, our Moon would be '1', Phobos would be '2' and so on up to '172'. Easy huh? Pronounceable too!

But, wait! Had they invented numbers back? Were they still using Roman numerals? That would be a problem. Ours would be called 'I' (eye), Phobos would be 'II' (eye,eye) and so on up to CLXXII (sea, ell, ex, ex, eye, eye).

Bad idea.

If we had done that, the 'Old McDonald had a Farm' song would be thought of a song to some moon. "... had a farm, EIEIO"!

Don't you wonder about such things?

Something Cosmic the group should think about.