Origin and history of apogee

"point farthest from the sun" (of a celestial body's orbit), 1670s, a Grecianized form of Modern Latin aphelium (itself attested in English from 1650s), coined by Johannes Kepler based on Greek apo hēliou "away from the sun." The word is thus an assimilated form of apo "away from" (see apo-) + hēliou, genitive of hēlios "sun" (from PIE root *sawel- "the sun"), formed on the model of Ptolemaic apogaeum (see apogee) to reflect the new heliocentric model of the universe.

Earth as a goddess, from Greek Gaia, spouse of Uranus, mother of the Titans, personification of gaia "earth" (as opposed to heaven), "land" (as opposed to sea), "a land, country, soil;" it is a collateral form of gē (Dorian ga) "earth," which is of unknown origin and perhaps from a pre-Indo-European language of Greece. The Roman equivalent goddess of the earth was Tellus (see tellurian), sometimes used in English poetically or rhetorically for "Earth personified" or "the Earth as a planet."