[Hondor]

Astronaut is the original English word. Cosmonaut is a transliteration from the Russian word for astronaut. So if we're speaking English, we should use astronaut regardless of the country they're from. Otherwise we're forced to invent silly new words that nobody understands like taikonaut and what will we call Indian astronauts or whoever's next?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut#Terminology

[kuschku]

The argument is that Astronaut means "sailor of the stars", but "Cosmonaut" means "sailor of the cosmos".

As they’re obviously not sailing between stars, but in the cosmos, Cosmonaut is obviously the correct term.

[Hondor]

Not according to dictionary.com:

"Astro- a combining form with the meaning “pertaining to stars or celestial bodies, or to activities, as spaceflight, taking place outside the earth's atmosphere,” used in the formation of compound words:"

It sounds like the Greek(?) meaning has been lost now in English, which is fine since it's a different language. Astronomers still sometimes look at other planets afterall.

[kuschku]

According to that, literally means figuratively, too.

Sometimes linguistic prescriptivism is necessary to keep a language actually understandable, and to ensure it makes sense, and doesn’t just become thousands of independent statements that you have to learn by heart.

[areyousure]

That ship sailed long ago.

[logfromblammo]

Not obviously. If we're going to quibble over details, we might as well do it properly. The astro- root can also translate as a non-stellar celestial body, since at the time the word meaning was established, the planets were considered "wanderer" stars. Also, asteroids are not stars, but bear a related etymological root.

Cosmos, on the other hand, derives from the entire universe. Obviously, the universe surrounds us completely, but if you're willing to call someone in LEO a cosmonaut, I'm not certain you couldn't say the same about someone driving a car on the planet's surface to the grocery store to buy milk. Both are traveling through the cosmos. Where's the cutoff? Earth escape velocity? Solar escape velocity? Galactic escape velocity? People in LEO just aren't going fast enough.

I have no qualms about calling the flight personnel of the Apollo program "astronauts", as their goal was to reach another celestial body, even if it was not literally a star, and several of them actually made it there. "Selenauts" would also have been appropriate.

But since 1972, we have only been sending humans as far as LEO. Maybe "lacunauts" would be better for those in space, but not traveling to other celestial bodies?

[palunon]

What about Spationaut ? They are sailing through space...

[blkhawk]

Everybody is a bloody Spationaut.

[FlyingSnake]

> what will we call Indian astronauts

They will be called 'Vyomnauts' apparently.