• @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      253 minutes ago

      “Luz” is an incredibly common name in Spanish speaking countries. It means light. “Luce” means light in Italian, but seems to be less common as a name. Lucifer means “Light-bringer”, and the myth of the light-bringer is much, much older than Christianity.

      Old religions thought things in the sky were gods. Venus orbits closer to the sun than the Earth, which means light reflecting from it is extremely bright, but that light is only visible near sunrise and sunset. During the rest of the day the brightness of the sun overwhelms the reflected light from Venus, and during the rest of the night it’s not visible because it’s near the sun, so it’s behind the earth. So, old religions talked about the brightest “god” in the sky, who disappeared when it got too bright or too dark. That led to the myth of the god who tried to be the brightest light and was cast down. That, of course, led to Satan, A.K.A. Lucifer.

      I guess the Catholic church was giving its followers too much credit in their understanding of words.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      468 hours ago

      Yes; “Luce” is Italian for "Light’ and “Lucifer” is Latin for “light bearer”. They are cognates.

      • @Rolando
        link
        English
        226 hours ago

        So whoever carries that anime figure is literally Luciferian.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        46 hours ago

        I thought they spoke Latin in the Vatican, aren’t they Latino? Otherwise how do we get such classical Christian idioms like “Romanes eunt domus”?

          • @samus12345
            link
            English
            53 hours ago

            There’s Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese…there are more Germanic-derived ones than Latin-derived, aren’t there?

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              62 hours ago

              Romanian, Catalan, Sicilian, Galician, Venetian, probably a number of other dialects, are also Latin descendants.

              • @samus12345
                link
                English
                2
                edit-2
                2 hours ago

                I’d have to get a list of every country considered “western” and then figure out how many have predominantly Latin-derived and Germanic-derived languages. Too much work. “Nearly every” one of them would most certainly not be Latin-derived, though.

                • @[email protected]
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  52 hours ago

                  Thankfully there’s an entire field of linguistics that’s already done the work. Quick Google search shows 22 Latin descendant languages, and 24 Germanic descendant languages. So slightly more, yeah.

                  • @samus12345
                    link
                    English
                    22 hours ago

                    Thanks, my google-fu wasn’t up to the task. That’s about what I was expecting.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              2
              edit-2
              2 hours ago

              I was thinking like… English.
              Sure, it’s got German and French and Greek and just a mess of everything, but there’s a lot of Latin in there.

              • @samus12345
                link
                English
                3
                edit-2
                1 hour ago

                English is a Germanic language that has had significant Latin and French (which added more Latin) injected into it over the years. It has to be the most mongrel widespread language in existence, which is probably why it’s such a mess when it comes to spelling. Still, it also has a lot of flexibility and word choices because of it.