Astronaut is a modern coinage from Greek 'ástron' (star) and 'naútēs' (sailor), literally meaning 'star sailor,' adopted by NASA in 1958.
A person who is trained to travel in a spacecraft; a crew member of a spaceflight.
A 20th-century coinage from Greek "astron" (star) and "nautēs" (sailor), modeled on "aeronaut" (air-sailor, balloonist). Greek "astron" derives from Proto-Indo-European *h₂stḗr (star), one of the most stable words in the language family, surviving with minimal change across 5,000 years in Latin "stella" (from *sterla), Sanskrit "stṛ," Gothic "stairno," Old English "steorra," and Armenian "astł." Greek "nautēs" comes from "naus" (ship), from PIE *néh₂us (boat, ship), which produced Latin "nāvis" (ship), Sanskrit "nau" (boat), Old Irish "nau" (ship), Old Norse "nór" (a type of boat), and Persian "nāv" (ship). The compound literally means
Different space programs name their travelers differently using the same Greek root '-naut' (sailor): NASA has astronauts (star sailors), Russia has cosmonauts (universe sailors), and China has taikonauts (space sailors). All are etymologically sailors.