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Where does the English word moon come from? How about its Indian equivalent, Chandra? And why did Nasa name its moon missions after a sun god? Your lunar language questions answered. Photo: Shutterstock
Opinion
Language Matters
by Lisa Lim
Language Matters
by Lisa Lim

Lunar language: the roots of the English word moon – and of Chandra, its Indian counterpart, that gave its name to Chandrayaan-3 mission

  • The root of the English word moon is one meaning measure – the moon’s phases were an ancient measure of time, after all. Lunar comes from the Latin for moon
  • Nasa named its moon missions after Greek sun god Apollo, but India’s successful moon-landing Chandrayaan-3 mission combines the Indian words for moon and coach
Lisa Lim
Lisa Lim
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The English word “moon” is rooted in the Old English mona, inherited from Germanic. This is from the Proto-Indo-European *me(n)ses-, meaning “moon” and “month”, from the root *me- “to measure”, in reference to the moon’s phases as an ancient measure of time.

This root is seen in many English words: the word “measure”, and all words relating to meter, such as centimetre, symmetry. Mēnsis “month” gives mēnstruus “monthly”, and thence “menstruation”.

To speak of things related to the moon, however, English uses “lunar”. This is from the Latin for “moon”, lūna – Luna also being the name of the Roman goddess of the full moon.

Her Greek counterpart is Selene – selene means “moon”, from the Greek selas “light, brightness, gleam”. Both words derive ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *leuk-, “light, brightness”. Selenography is the science of the physical features and geography of the moon.

Nasa astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon in 1969. Curiously, the US space agency named its lunar missions after Apollo, the Greek god of the sun. Photo: Neil Armstrong/Nasa/via Reuters

Curiously, in Nasa’s long history of naming its missions after Greek mythological beings, its most significant programme, which succeeded in landing the first humans on the moon from 1968 to 1972, was named not after any moon deity, but after the sun god. Apollo riding his chariot across the sun was felt then to be appropriate to the grand scale of the proposed programme.

It is only with Nasa’s more recent space programme to put a woman on the moon that the name of Apollo’s twin, Artemis, goddess of the hunt and the moon, was adopted.
A tattoo artist sketches a tattoo celebrating the success of India’s Chandrayaan-3 moon-landing mission on a woman’s back in Ahmedabad, India. Photo: Reuters
Now it is the name of the Hindu god of the moon, Chandra, that marks the most recent successful lunar mission. On August 23, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-3 mission placed a lander and rover on the moon’s unexplored south polar region, which is significant for its valuable resource of lunar ice.

Chandra – originating in the Sanskrit candra “moon”, derived from cand, meaning “to shine” – in the languages of India means “bright, luminous”, and is the word for “moon” as well as its personification as a deity.

The Hindi word yaan, originating in Sanskrit, is a vehicle, coach or carriage.

The face of a statue of the Hindu moon goddess Chandra in in Nandi Temple, Candi Prambanan, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Photo: Shutterstock

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared the landing “a victory cry of a new India”. In fact, the lander is named Vikram (in honour of Vikram Sarabhai, the “father of the Indian space programme”), which means “wise, courageous, victorious”.

On the full moon at the end of August you may have looked to the moon’s south pole and imagined Chandrayaan-3’s rover, Pragyan – “wisdom” in Sanskrit – moving across the lunar terrain in search of such greater knowledge.
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