May 2012 Solar Eclipse

Blogging has been sparce around here lately, mainly because I have been in Japan on a missions trip for a while. But last week, while in Nagoya, I saw a full solar eclipse. It was Monday, May 21, and it was the first time in nearly a millenium that a solar eclipse had been visible from this area of the world.

So that raises the important linguistic question, which language has the more descriptive word for "solar eclipse"?

English: solar eclipse (literally, "failure to appear [on the part of the sun]")
Spanish: eclipse solar
French: éclipse solaire
Japanese: 日食 (literally, "sun eating" or "an eating of the sun")