Who Named The Planet Mercury

Mercury was also the god of travelers.

Who named the planet mercury. Like all the planets mercury is named after one of the roman gods which were based on the gods worshipped by the ancient greeks. The roman god mercury was the son of maia maiestas and jupiter in. Mercury is the smallest of the eight planets and is closest to the sun. Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the solar system its orbit around the sun takes 87 97 days the shortest of all the planets in the solar system.

It is named after the god hermes ερμής translated into latin mercurius mercury god of commerce messenger of the gods mediator between gods and mortals. Named for the fleet footed roman messenger god mercury is the closest planet to the sun zipping around our parent star at an average of 36 million miles away. Mercury was named after the roman messenger god because of its fast movements around the sun. They named them after their most important gods.

The naming of planet mercury goes as far back as the roman era. The sun the moon and the five brightest planets. In classical greece it was called apollo when it appeared as a morning star just before sunrise and hermes the greek equivalent of the roman god mercury when it appeared as an evening star just after sunset hermes was the swift messenger of the gods and the planet s name is. Mercury is the closest planet to the sun at a distance of 57 91 million kilometers 35 98 miles or 0 4 au away.

Like venus mercury orbits the sun within earth s orbit as an inferior. The difficulty in seeing it notwithstanding mercury was known at least by sumerian times some 5 000 years ago. This paradoxically makes mercury the closest planet to earth a plurality of the time. Since they were a superstitious group they named these objects after their most important deities.

Because mercury was the fastest planet as it moved around the sun it was named after the roman messenger god mercury.