history of - Where did using "Luna" as the future name for the moon come from?

Besides Latin, of course. It seems to be very common to refer to the (typically colonized) moon as "Luna" in sci-fi works. Did authors independently decide to use the Latin name? Or did someone originate this, and future usages were a reference/tribute? Why do future humans use a name that current humans generally don't?

Answer

The reason why people in a science-fiction future would call the moon Luna is explained in Seeds' answer. If, like most people today, you only know about one moon, you can just call it the moon. If there are lots of moons that play a part in your life—you read about them in the papers, visit them on vacations, go to work on them, etc.—and if all the other moons have proper names like Phobos, Callisto, Titan, etc., then Earth's moon needs a proper name too, and Luna is a natural choice.

But you also seem to be asking about the origin of calling the moon Luna in science fiction. According to the Science Fiction Citations site, it seems to have started with this line from Raymond Z. Gallun's novelette "The Lunar Chrysalis" in Amazing Stories, September 1931, p. 528, column 2 (available at the Internet Archive):

I never regretted my decision to be one of the first men to visit Luna.

Comments

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