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I'll throw in my two cent's worth...(but I want my change back.)
In writing Science Fiction, there was always a perceived problem with these names of distinguishing the local usage (earth=dirt) versus a planet name, the moon (circling the Earth) from a generic moon, the star warming Earth from just another G0 star. In stories strictly set without interstellar travel, the local vs. generic problem could be ignored, but for stories with interstellar travel as part of it, some nomenclature had to be decided on to be able to separately distinguish the local usage from the generic.
Example, if I live on a planet circling Tau Ceti, a G5 star 11 light years away, what am I going to call the star the planet revolves around, Tau Ceti, or "the sun". I want a word that means "big warm glowing thing in the sky", wherever the sky is, on "Earth" or some other planet. Tau Ceti might do, but some further star whose name is just a string of stellar catalog numbers? Certainly not for everyday "the <start catalog number 574863>" certainly is hot today while I'm plowing" usage.
The same holds for Earth and the Moon. You need a formal name, separate from the generic, for precise usage. That's what those science fiction writers were doing.
Now as to Tellus versus Terra. The inventor of Space Opera, E.E. Smith PH. D., always used Tellus, or even more formally SOL III (3rd planet out from Sol). However, by the 1950's science fiction was embarrassed by those old space operas, (see the Literary Snob thread) and didn't want their (striving to be literarially accepted) writing to be associated with that old horrible pulp stuff. So they used Terra instead for the same definition....
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