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Asked by billybunsen to Asif, Laura, Lena, Sean, Viv on 16 Mar 2012.
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Lena Ciric answered on 16 Mar 2012:
Mars is named after the Roman god of war. We think the reason for this is because of it’s red colour which might signify blood or danger.
Mars and Venus are our closest planets and are symbols of masculinity and femininity – maybe that had something to do with their naming, too.
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Sean Murphy answered on 16 Mar 2012:
Mars, also known as the red planet, was named in ancient roman times in honor of “Mars” their god of war. The ancient Egyptians named Mars Her Descher which means the red one.
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Viv Lyons answered on 18 Mar 2012:
Many of the planets were named after ancient gods. Mercury was the Roman god of travel, Jupiter was the largest planet that the Romans could see so they called is Jupiter who was considered the most important of their gods, Saturn was the father of Jupiter, Uranus was the Greek god of the sky, Neptune was the Roman god of the sea and Pluto, which is not formally a planet, was named after the Roman god of the underworld.
Some of these planets were named by the ancient because they could see them by eye but others can only been seen only using modern telescopes but the same naming conventions were used.
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