Language -- A Note on the Title

I have decided to set aside some space here to explain the title of this blog, Errant Terran, which has raised some questions and also has some connection to my own interests in language.

First of all, Errant Terran can be translated (badly) into more standard English as Wandering Earthling, which keeps most of the meaning and sacrifices almost all of the prosody.[1] 'Errant' is from an old French (Anglo-French) word meaning "to wander," but it seems to have survived in that sense only in the archaic compound "knight-errant," literally "wandering knight." It is related to the English verb "to err," but the one etymology source I have access to seems to indicate that this relationship is a bit more complicated than I'd originally thought. 'Terran,' apparently arising (at least with that spelling) in science fiction, can be used to mean "an inhabitant of the Earth," from the Latin term 'terra,' earth. Some readers have correctly guessed that I first picked up the term from the science-fiction game StarCraft, in which one of the races, unmistakably human, is designated as "Terran," but the term would seem to predate that by at least 100 years.

Obviously I like etymologies, the histories of words, and I like to use words that are less common. On this last point, however, I try to follow in the spirit of John McPhee when he says, "It's not the search for the recondite word [...] not the search for unusualness for its own sake. It's the search for the right word, which may or may not be a common word."[2] Errant Terran is not a 'common word,' but it is 'right' insofar as it is exact in what I want it to say. I am "of this Earth", and my current occupation seems to be wandering through it. (I earlier rejected "Errant American" which, while also true, felt somehow too provincial.) The subtitle specifies this further--what the blog is concerned with is not so much my physical travels across the planet (though they show up from time to time), but the significantly wider wanderings of my mind.

I didn't justify the title like this in my head. Some of it was there, but mostly it just came to me, half a day into playing with the idea of writing a blog. I knew at once that it was the 'correct' name of the blog (I had already run through a few other possibilities), and I also knew that I would actually have to sit down and write the blog now. It was like a stray animal: once you'd named it, you had to keep it. So I did, and Fiat Lux (Let there be Light), the Errant Terran came into being through a name.

Adam naming the animals [a]

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Notes:
[1] For one thing, "Errant Terran" is an anagram--the two words are spelled with the same letters, only slightly rearranged.
[2] That specific quotation from John McPhee's interview comes in around 13:45. 

References:
[a] Nicolaes Berchem, Adam Naming the Animals. Pen and brown ink with brown wash, 5.8 x 9.1 cm. San Marino, California, Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery (Kitto Bible, fol. 125). Retrieved from http://www.kunstpedia.com/articles/nine-religious-drawings-by-nicolaes-berchem-designs-to-ornament-maps-in-a-1669-bible.html