What Latin name for the Milky Way means 'milky road'?

The Latin name Via Lactea means “milky road” and is the source of the English name Milky Way. Via means “road” or “way,” while lactea means “milky,” from lac, the Latin word for milk.

The name describes the pale, diffuse band that stretches across the night sky. From a dark location, that band is not a single smooth cloud but the combined, unresolved light of enormous numbers of stars, mixed with interstellar dust that obscures parts of it.

Roman usage inherited the expression from Greek descriptions of the same celestial feature. The Hellenistic Greek term galaxias, meaning “milky,” later became the root of galaxy, so the Latin and Greek traditions are linked both to the sky’s appearance and to modern astronomical vocabulary.

Via Lactea should not be confused with Aqua Vitae, which means “water of life,” or Stella Nova, “new star.” Also, “Milky Way” can mean either the visible band in the sky or the entire galaxy containing the Solar System.