2619: Greek Name for Mars Feb 15, 2022

English has lots of words with 'pyro-' like 'pyromaniac' from the Greek word for 'fire', but their word for the planet Mars, Pyroeis, which literally 'the fiery' we did not go with. Instead, we took took the Roman name 'Mars', a deity of war, because its red color was associated with blood. The Greek name was for the same reason, though it went in another direction.

2616: Mars & marshal Feb 12, 2022

Most words that English adopted from Latin—which is quite a high number—are either native or originally borrowed from Greek. That said, one overlooked source for the Latin words initially was Etruscan, and many of the Roman's words are from them. In the case of Mars, a deity, this is slightly more complicated as the religious elements were largely Greek but the name was Etruscan, with their Mars being a child-god, not a war-god. It is true 'military' is ultimately Etruscan, but as a result of this, so are other war-inspired words like 'marshal' and 'martial'.