01. Does the word "moon" come from a certain language? What does the word "moon" mean? (A K2S Question)

From The Space Library

The English word for our Moon is a direct descendant of the Anglo- Saxon word mona, and is related to the word Germans use, mond. For the Goths of ancient Europe, it was mena, providing the link to the ancient Greek word for the Moon, mene. It has even deeper Indo- European linguistic roots in pre-history. Historians studying ancient texts have consistently found that the word used to refer to the Moon is also used to refer to the time the Moon takes to complete a cycle from new to full to new, about 29 days. For the Romans, this period was the mensis, the same word they used for the Moon. This was also true for the Greek word, mene, from which it was derived. Luna, a word that also came from the Romans, refers to the goddess of the Moon, not the Moon itself, though through the course of history that distinction has mostly been lost and lune and luna are found in modern languages referring to our companion. http://plateaupress.com.au/wfw/monthsof.htm (See CDROM)

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Answer provided by Thomas Matula, Ph.D. & Kenneth J. Murphy

Question and Answer extracted from the book Kids to Space - by Lonnie Schorer

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