Influence of Astrology on Language

English, and many other languages, have a large number of words and ideas  whose etymology is derived from astrological concepts.

​Is it lunacy to consider that the flu disaster chronology has anything to do with astrology – even on a Sunday?

In case you missed them, the above sentence contains six astrology-derived words in addition to the word astrology itself. Astrology itself can be considered a language of sorts. And just as languages borrow words back and forth, many languages borrow astrology terms and concepts.

Some of the obvious ones are lunacy and lunatic – derived from Luna, the Moon. It is thought that the position and phase of the Moon affects people's mental states, thus the astrological etymology is rather direct. To call someone a “star” derives from ancient concepts about the influence of celestial bodies. Similarly, for “stellar” performance. An artist’s rise to fame could be “meteoric”, he/she could be a “rising star” or she could be “eclipsed” by a competitor or other events. Or could be at the zenith of his career.

Some other obvious astrology-derived words would be mercurial (Mercury), venereal (Venus), martial (Mars), jovial (Jupiter or Jove), saturnine (Saturn) and capricious (Capricorn).

The days of the week in many instances are also astrologically derived. Sunday (Sun), Monday (Moon), and Saturday (Saturn) are all readily apparent in English. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday seem different – but only because English is from the Germanic family of languages and some of the days are named after the northern European equivalents of Mars (Tew, hence “Tuesday”), Wotan (Mercury, “Wednesday”), Thor (Jupiter, Thursday), and Freya (Venus, Friday). The connection is a bit clearer in Romance languages.

It is not unusual to use individual star names, often for commercial purposes or to name ships. Examples are numerous, eg  – “Vega Australia Pty Ltd”, “Orion Global” property company, “Sirius College” educational institute…

Let’s thank our lucky stars for these brilliant insights…