Who named Earth?

As if this question is about life and death. But really, sometimes this would've crossed your mind, wondering why the earth is called Earth.

The tiny globe called Earth

I scooped this from Science Focus magazine and it said the Greeks and Romans named most of the planets in the Solar System after particular gods, and we have kept those names in English. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, all unknown in classical times, were named by the modern astronomers who discovered them, but still after Greek and Roman gods.

Earth is the one exception. Its name, according to the official gazetteer of planetary discovery, comes from the Indo-European base 'er', which produced the Germanic noun 'ertho', the modern German 'erde', Dutch 'aarde', Danish and Swedish 'jord', and English 'earth'.

Hmm, not definitive enough. But what's in the name anyway? What's important is how we live our life on it and how we maintain it so that the next generation enjoys the same privileges we enjoy today. One way to do that is to be thankful for what we have and by 'living green'.