The name of the Moon, magic and menstruation

In regards to why the IAU settled on “Moon” instead of one of the more flamboyant names that existed, they stated that since the Moon was the first known moon, and popularly called something like that for millennia in many languages, it was easier to simply make it official than introduce a new name, since their original goal was to make things easier for people to understand, not harder.

And, of course, “Moon” is actually a pretty cool name, only made less interesting by the fact that we’ve applied it as a generic name for the natural, large satellites of other planets. Had we not done that, “Moon” would have seemed every bit as distinct of a name as “Pluto”, which incidentally was not named after the Disney character, as many have suggested. Although it was named by an 11 year old girl, helping to give legs to the myth about the Disney origin.

This brings us to the origin of the name of Earth’s favourite satellite, “Moon”. The word “moon” can be traced back to Old English, where it is said to have derived from the Proto-Germanic word “menon”, which in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European “*menses”, meaning “month, moon”. This highlights how far back the association between the Moon and the passage of time goes.

Bonus Facts:

With few exceptions, the Moon has long been associated with women, fertility and a whole host of other commonly ascribed “female” attributes. Why? In most cases, menstrual cycles more or less coincide with the phases of the Moon. It should then come as no surprise that across many languages, the words for “moon”, “month”, and the name for a woman’s menstrual cycle often has the same root word. For instance, the English word “menses” (Websters: “the flow of blood that comes from a woman’s body each month”) popped up in the late 16th century deriving from the Latin “menses” meaning “month”.