![\"A](\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/starsailor.gif\")
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Did you know that the word astronaut means “star sailor”?<\/p>\n
This is something I learnt from an interesting Allusionist podcast on Technobabble<\/a>. <\/p>\n Astronaut comes from the Ancient Greek \u1f04\u03c3\u03c4\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd<\/em> (\u00e1stron – star) and \u03bd\u03b1\u03cd\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2<\/em> (na\u00fat\u0113s – sailor). It first appeared as the name of a space craft in Across the Zodiac<\/em>, a story written by Percy Greg in the 1880. It was used in the 1920s in writing about the possiblity of space travel, and in the U.S. space program from the 1960s [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n Some other space-related words have a nautical roots as well, including (space)ship, mast, batton and sail.<\/p>\n Other words for star sailors include:<\/p>\n – cosmonaut<\/strong>, from the Russian \u043a\u043e\u0441\u043c\u043e\u043d\u0430\u0301\u0432\u0442<\/em> (kosmon\u00e1vt), from the Ancient Greek \u03ba\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2<\/em> (k\u00f3smos – universe) &+ -naut [source<\/a>] Many other languages use one or other of these words. Here are some exceptions:<\/p>\n – In Chinese an astronaut is either \u592a\u7a7a\u4eba (t\u00e0i\u200bk\u014dng\u200br\u00e9n – “space person”), \u822a\u5929\u54e1 (h\u00e1ng\u200bti\u0101n\u200byu\u00e1n – “boat sky personnel”), or \u5b87\u822a\u5458 [\u5b87\u822a\u54e1] (y\u01d4h\u00e1ngyu\u00e1n – “universe boat personnel”) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n – In Icelandic an astronaut is a geimfari<\/em>, from geimur<\/em> (space) + -fari<\/em> (traveler) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n
\n– taikonaut<\/strong>, from the Chinese \u592a\u7a7a (t\u00e0ik\u014dng – space) +\u200e -naut [source<\/a>]
\n– spationaut<\/strong>, from spatio (space) + -naut [source<\/a>]<\/p>\n