this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
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It's called "the sun" in English yes. Now, this is going to sounds crazy, but hear me out on this one.... There are other languages than English. And I've heard rumors, that scientists across the world are all using this weird one called "Latin" when it comes to naming stuff.
Using Latin to name things has been falling out of fashion over the last few decades. But a bit more to the point, you will not find a scientific paper that names the star we orbit 'Sol.' That is strictly sci-fi. It's always 'Sun,' 'the Sun,' or 'The Sun.' We should start calling it Sol in official capacities because it's consistent and less confusing, but we haven't. We do the same thing with our moon - it's always 'Moon,' 'the Moon,' or 'The Moon' rather than Luna. If you want the standard changed, you could try petitioning the International Astronomical Union.
Ah, I was wondering why NASA kept talking about "Trans Lunar Burn" and "Lunar orbit" instead of "Trans moonar burn" and "moonar orbit". So silly to talk about "circumsolar orbits" when it's clearly "Circumsunar orbit".
The only major exception is Earth, where orbits around us are called out in english, more specifically, the initials. LEO, MEO, HEO. The L stands for "Low", so I'm sure you can figure out what the M and H stands for.
And no, using latin to name things have not been falling out of fashion. Every time we discover a species (which we still do, every single day), their species are immediately named in latin.
And lots of things, are still called by their latin names in English. e.g. (exempli gratia) Virus. Alibi. Malfeasance. Agenda. Incalculable. Modicum. Mundane. Ambiguous. Bacteria. Naive. Atrocity. Cull. Debilitate. Et Cetera.
I could go on but you get the point. Latin is everywhere. You just didn't know that it's Latin to begin with.
NASA calls our star the Sun. NASA calls our moon the Moon or Earth's Moon. They use solar and lunar anyway, except for a few instances where they use Greek, like 'heliosphere.' It's inconsistent with everything else and it bugs me, but that's what they do.
New species the last couple years have been named after David Attenborough, Mothra, a teacher, a cartoon character, and one that uses ChiShona in the same way that Latin is more commonly used. Latin is still used, of course, but with decreasing frequency.