How did the terra get its name?

Answer 1

The roman goddess of the earth was named Terra.

That is a good answer, but there is more to this. My question would then be, "why is there a Roman goddess named Terra?"

The word "terra" originates from an archaic Hebrew word "erets", which also means land or earth. In the old Hebrew language or other similar languages such as Phoenician, it was spelled in a way that would be transliterated as "arets". Hebrew is right right-to-left. So when you right it left-to-right, you get "tsere".

The "ts" in Hebrew is transliterated to "t" in Latin and the "s" in the "ts" is lost. That is a common pattern. The "e" and "a" are interchangeable when moving words from one language to another. Just think about how English words and Spanish words changes spelling when translated between the two.

So the answer is that "terra" comes from "erets"... just read backwards.