Why "cosmonaut"?

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.

Maybe the Russian word for space is closer to “Cosmos” than “Astros”?

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.

Do Russian soccer stadiums use Cosmoturf?

Important note: “Cosmonaut” was coined before “Astronaut”.

The first man in Space was Yuri Gagarin.

Because the use of a different term set the glorious heroes of the Soviet Union apart from the hated capitalistic swine in America.

When the French space program…ahem…got off the ground, they elected to call their intrepid voyages neither astronauts nor cosmonauts, but spacionauts.

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.

When the Chinese go into space, they will be called taikonauts. At least in English.

In Soviet Russia, stars travel to you!

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.)

Notice how the article begins

Then…

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.

If a star hit Siberia, it would do more than knock down a few trees!

One day I hope our astromen will make it to the moon.

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?

Astronaut, according to the FAA. Spaceship One’s pilots have their FAA Astronaut wings.

The word “taikonaut” should be banned - the Chinese don’t use it; it was coined by a Singapore newspaper. Col. Yang Liwei was the first yuhangyuan in space.

“Filthy-rich”?

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.”

Haha, beautiful. Yakov Smirnoff would be proud.

Everything you’d ever want to know about the proper term in most popular languages.