If you’re a “doctor” in the States, in Russia you’re also a “doctor.” If you’re a politician in the States, in Russia you’re also a “politician.” But if you’re an astronaut in the States, suddenly your occupation changes if you’re in Russia: you’re now a “cosmonaut,” even though you do exactly the same thing. I can understand why the mass media might have started this (cold war reasons), but to continue it until now, seems silly.
Can anyone explain this? (Cecil refuses to. Maybe he’s stumped.)
The only other similar term I can think of is that a robber becomes a “bandito” in Mexico–but Spanish terms are natural considering the geographic history between the US and Mexcio.
Perhaps the question should be why they are “astronauts” in the west, since “astro” comes from the Latin word for “star”, and they don’t go to the stars. (Not even to the nearest one, the Sun). But they do go out into the cosmos.
Or, perhaps (seeing Bosda Di’Chi’s post and assuming it to be true), the use of a different term set the brave heroes of the United States apart from the goddammed communistic Russkies.
Nah, they’re already in the cosmos, regardless of how close to a planet they happen to be. If one were looking for accuracy, one would probably have to settle for vacunauts, or orbitnauts.
Maybe. I’m referring to English-language media. We don’t refer to a lawyer in Mexico as “abogado.”
Actually, the term astronaut was in use in the US as early as 1930. Cosmonaut (in the US) appeared around 1955.
Yeah. I guess it’s just a cold war hangover. (Just like every scandal–regardless of where it occurs–now ends in “-gate” (“Contragate,” “Monicagate”), because Nixon’s henchmen were caugh breaking into the Watergate building.)
But why is this the only occupation where English speakers give a damn what other languages say? If “astronauts” works in the first paragraph, why do they have to generate some new term “based on the Chinese word”…? All I can see is that it’s a silly remnant of the space race that the media can’t shake off. They don’t do this for any other professions, as far as I can see.
Why the future tense? They’ve already sent up at least one. And while we’re at it, is there a special term for a space-farer launched by private industry, rather than any government?
The OED’s earliest quotation listing for “astronaut” in the sense of a human space taveler[sup]*[/sup] is from 1929. Its earliest quotation for “cosmonaut” is from 1959, though that doesn’t give a hint as to when the Russians started using the word kosmonavt.
*It has an alternate definition of “astronaut” as a “name given to a space ship” with a quotation from 1880. This definition is listed as “rare.”