The Moons and Jupiter

Bruce set up his telescope by the pond a few weeks ago and took these pictures of Jupiter and its four moons; all lined up like celestial soldiers.  The NASA website has a short, very interesting article about them:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Display=Moons&Object=Jupiter

Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are such noble names to have given these moons (astronomers have the souls of poets).  Which begs the question: why is our own moon simply referred to as "the moon?"  Why doesn't it have a real name?  Isn't this a bit like naming your dog "Dog"?  Accurate: yes.  Imaginative: not so much.  Actually, "Dog" as a name is at least capitalized as a proper noun.  But we simply toss out "the moon" as a lower case common noun, not even worthy of a capital "M" at the beginning. 

The other, related question, of course, is what would be a fitting name for our moon?  I thought about this coming home from school last evening.  When I reached the crest of Gopher Ridge, there was our own glowing, almost-full moon grandly sailing up from the horizon.  I switched off the radio, and pondered on names for the moon until I reached our house.  I couldn't come up with anything because I got stuck on trying to figure out the gender of our moon.  Male or female: I can't decide.

As I came up the drive, there stood Corny and Sarah, sillouettes in the moonlight, waiting for me to arrive home to give them their dinner. 

Tonight we'll only be feeding one horse.  Sigh...