That ⟨地球⟩ is perhaps the only exception that we’re damn sure on how Earth got its name. The guy who coined the expression was a priest of the Papal States called Matteo Ricci, living in Ming around 1600. He did a living translating works back and forth between Chinese and Latin, and calqued that expression from Latin orbis terrarum - roughly “the globe of soils”, or “the ball of earths”.
Ancient Chinese mysticism (yijing, wuxing, daoism) have the concept of earth as either kūn (field, like of grass) or di (earth, like soil). I believe both are 地. This is in contrast to Heaven (tian) which is above. I believe both were conceived of as infinite parallel planes.
天地人 (tiān-dì-rén) are Heaven, Earth, and Human; and were sometimes seen as the 3 primal forces of reality.
In Chinese it’s 地球 which is basically “earth (as in dirt) ball”
That ⟨地球⟩ is perhaps the only exception that we’re damn sure on how Earth got its name. The guy who coined the expression was a priest of the Papal States called Matteo Ricci, living in Ming around 1600. He did a living translating works back and forth between Chinese and Latin, and calqued that expression from Latin orbis terrarum - roughly “the globe of soils”, or “the ball of earths”.
Ancient Chinese mysticism (yijing, wuxing, daoism) have the concept of earth as either kūn (field, like of grass) or di (earth, like soil). I believe both are 地. This is in contrast to Heaven (tian) which is above. I believe both were conceived of as infinite parallel planes.
天地人 (tiān-dì-rén) are Heaven, Earth, and Human; and were sometimes seen as the 3 primal forces of reality.
Woah, that’s awesome! I had no idea about the etymology. Thanks for sharing!