China didn't have the name Earth in ancient times.
In fact, China never really realized that the earth was round in ancient times, so there was no name similar to the earth. There are only some vague names representing the world, such as the four seas and the world.
Of course, the ancients in China did not know that the earth was round. For example, during the Warring States Period, China appeared "Huntian Theory", which had a little concept of "the earth is round". Zhang Heng, a scientist in the Eastern Han Dynasty who invented the seismograph, once put forward:
The sky is wrapped in the ground and the shell is wrapped in yellow.
(Illustration of "Huntian Theory" in ancient China)
It is to compare the sky to an eggshell wrapped in egg yolk, which is actually very similar to what we know in modern times that the atmosphere wraps around the earth. In fact, it can be thought that he is implying that the earth is round. However, this theory was not the mainstream in ancient China, and the mainstream understanding was still a "round place".
("Heaven and Round Place" is China's mainstream understanding of the world in ancient times)
The origin of the word "earth"
So where did the Chinese word earth come from? Tracing back to the source, it still comes from the words about the earth in western languages. For example, "earth" in English. But in fact, although the word earth in Chinese comes from translation, it has different meanings from the same word in western languages. In English, the word earth actually means the earth. Although it is also used to refer to the earth, it has no meaning of sphere or sphere. This is just a routine. Everyone knows that the object everyone steps on in this world is called the earth.
So many years ago, some media reported that an American astronaut had a conversation with his family in space. He once said, "I see the earth is round." Translating this sentence into Chinese will make people feel awkward. It's already called earth. Why do you think it is round? In fact, the correct translation of this sentence is: I see the earth is round.
(The earth is really round)
Because the word "earth" in English has no concept of a ball, it just means "earth", so the astronaut stressed when talking with his family that he really saw that the earth was round.
So strictly speaking, although the word earth comes from translation, its meaning goes beyond the corresponding words in western languages. This is mainly because the word earth appeared in Chinese very late, with a history of less than 100 years, and was first translated by some scientific and technological workers. At that time, in order to popularize the concept of "the earth is round" in China, they specially added the concept of "ball" to the translation, and translated "the earth" into the earth.