Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31481772-20180325060611

I am glad to present this week's word with Federico. This week's god is...... Mars! Mars is the Roman god of war. He is the son of Jupiter and Juno. His Greek form is Ares. The word Mars comes from the Latin word "Māvors", which in turn comes from Latin's ancestor, Proto-Italic. This suggests that the word "Mars" could come from PIE. However, we only know about words derived from Latin.

The English word "martial" (related to fighting) comes from Mars' name. So do name of the planet "Mars" and the word "Martian". The name of this month, "March", comes from the Latin word "mārtius", which ultimately comes from Mars' name! In Latin and its descendants, Tuesday is called "the day of Mars", e.g., "martis" in Latin, "martedì" in Italian, "mardi" in French and "martes" in Spanish. This is also the where the name of the festival "Mardi Gras" ("fat Tuesday") comes from!

There were many names in Latin derived from Mars, such as Marcus, Marcellus and Martinus. These words have descendants in many other languages, e.g., Mark, Marcel and Martin in English. We encourage you to think of similar names in other languages! Marcellus, as you might know, was the middle name of boxing legend Muhammad Ali before he converted to Islam.

Cities such as Mars, Pennsylvania in USA and Mars, Gard in France are named after Mars. Mars was so respected by the ancient Romans that they named a public area in Rome, the Field of Mars (or Campus Martius), after him. This field housed the Pantheon, a former Roman temple, which is now a church. There is still a region in Rome named the Field of Mars, called "Campo Marzio" in Italian.

Thank you for reading this post! We'd like you to think of words related to "Mars", "Mark", etc. in languages you know. If you do find such words, please comment them below!

You can find the previous word of the week here. 