The exoplanet Achilles
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From the Names Desk at Language Log Plaza, a bulletin from the October 31 New Scientist, p. 6:
ALIEN worlds deserve more romantic names. So says Wladimir Lyra at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, who has proposed mythological monikers for the known exoplanets.
The profusion of planets discovered around other stars in the past 15 years are known only by drab and hard to decipher strings of numbers and letters – at least officially. Instead, Lyra suggests that the 400 exoplanets found so far should be named after characters from Greek and Roman mythology, in the same way the planets in our own solar system were. For example, MOA-2007-BLG-400-Lb becomes "Achilles" (arxiv.org/abs/0910.3989).
Alas, Lyra's suggestions are unlikely to become official. The International Astronomical Union, which approves names for objects in our own solar system, considers it impractical to name exoplanets, given how many of them are likely to be discovered.
On beyond the dwarf planet Pluto and off to other worlds!
Boris said,
November 5, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
If we know how many planets orbit a particular star, we could use the Star Trek convention and name the star, referring to planets as numbers (where the natives have not already given the planet a name), like "Cardassia Prime" or "Rigel 12"
JS Bangs said,
November 5, 2009 @ 1:35 pm
Surely we can find enough names in the mythologies of the world to name all of the major exoplanets. Don't just restrict it to Greco-Roman names: I would love to learn about the planets Marduk and Quetzelcoatl.
CS Clark said,
November 5, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
Achilles is already the name of an asteroid, a Trojan in fact, and has been since 1906. I'm willing to bet that there isn't actually a Greek or Roman figure that isn't already in use. Surely denaming existing bodies is also a little impractical.
Jim said,
November 5, 2009 @ 1:51 pm
In Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, there's an offhand comment that astronomers have run out of Greek and Roman names, so they then moved on to the Hindu pantheon. That should last them for a while. ;)
Gareth Rees said,
November 5, 2009 @ 2:22 pm
Quetzalcoatl is also the name of an asteroid. Marduk seems to be free, unless you count the fictional planet proposed by ufologist Zecharia Sitchin.
David said,
November 5, 2009 @ 2:54 pm
Boris,
It isn't all that clear in the paragraph above but that's basically how they are named now. The first planet discovered orbiting V452 Vulpeculae, also known as HD 189733, is called HD 189733b. If another planet it discovered it, will be known as HD 189733c.
It's true that Teumesia is somewhat more fun than HD 189733b, but we'll soon know many more than 400 exoplanets and giving them all mythological names will become quite difficult.
mollymooly said,
November 5, 2009 @ 3:08 pm
There are already solar-system moons names after Norse, Inuit, Celtic, and fictional deities, and asteroids named after Nantucket and Ringo Starr.
mollymooly said,
November 5, 2009 @ 3:10 pm
Wikipedia to the rescue: Category:Astronomical_nomenclature
Ben Bolker said,
November 5, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
For what it's worth, H. Beam Piper's "Space Viking" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Viking) has a planet named Marduk (as well as planets named Gram, Khepera, Amaterasu, Beowulf, and Tanith). The book uses "Mardukan" as the adjectival form of "Marduk" (http://tinyurl.com/yexp7ra) …
Acilius said,
November 5, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
"I'm willing to bet that there isn't actually a Greek or Roman figure that isn't already in use." We may have run out of mythological figures, but perhaps we could use some historical personages or fictional characters from classical antiquity. The 7th century writer who called himself "Publius Vergilius Maro" invented a great many fictional characters whom he cited as authorities for his extraordinary claims about Latin grammar; it would be fitting for the planets in an especially bizarre solar system to be named after them, with names like Galbungus, Sufphonias, Gelvidius, Falanx Lacedaemonius, Gabritius, Bregandus, Glengus, and Balapsidus.
As I think about it, I begin to think that Vergil the Grammarian might be just the man we need to name the components of an alien solar system. Vergil claimed that there were twelve kinds of Latin, of which only one had ever been used or noticed by anyone other than himself. Perhaps a solar system of twelve planets could be named after these twelve Latinities, and the moons and features of those planets could be named after Vergil's fictional authorities and his other neologisms.
Karen said,
November 5, 2009 @ 4:22 pm
In Stargate SG-1 they referred to the planets by alphanumeric designators. It was a running gag for a while that Jack couldn't ever remember them.
Yuval said,
November 5, 2009 @ 5:41 pm
Wait… a guy named Lyra is talking about planets in other constellations and nobody points it out?
Something is clearly wrong here.
John Lawler said,
November 5, 2009 @ 6:01 pm
Jack Vance did it better:
The Rigel Concourse: Alphanor, Barleycorn, Chrysanthe, Diogenes, Elfland, Flame, Goshen, Hardacres, Image, Jezebel, Krokinole, Lyonnesse, Madagascar, Nowhere, Olliphane, Pilgham, Quinine, Raratonga, Somewhere, Tantamount, Unicorn, Valisande, Walpurgis, Xion, Ys, and Zacaranda. viz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Princes#Worlds_of_the_Oikumene
Mr Fnortner said,
November 5, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
Random names out of the phone book should do as well. For eclectic purposes, the books could rotate among the world's cities: Eddie Haskell, Yakov Smirnov, Hikaru Sulu, and so forth.
Forrest said,
November 5, 2009 @ 8:18 pm
I'm guessing we'll run out of mythological characters ( from all mythologies ), names of historic people, names of places, and then finally words in all natural languages, long before we run out of exo-planets in want of a name.
But that probably beats using guids.
Matthew Kehrt said,
November 5, 2009 @ 10:06 pm
It probably says something about my reading habits that, when reading some of the above comments, my first reaction was, "No, we can't name a planet *that*! The poor future inhabitants!"
Janice Huth Byer said,
November 5, 2009 @ 10:08 pm
Alternatively, why not sell the rights to name them? I'm sure there are good reasons not to, but precedent has been set by marine biologists, who've begun selling the right to name newly discovered sea beings.
http://wildfilms.blogspot.com/2008/07/scientific-names-for-sale.html
dr pepper said,
November 6, 2009 @ 1:32 am
Recency alert: SF writers having using "Star + Index" to designate planets long before Star Trek came along.
Randy Alexander said,
November 6, 2009 @ 2:31 am
@AZ: Nice Dr Seuss reference (assuming it is).
I think it's most appropriate to name astronomical bodies after astronomical bodies in science fiction. Greek and Roman gods have almost nothing to do with being the driving force behind astronomical exploration.
Randy Alexander said,
November 6, 2009 @ 2:33 am
Re: Seuss: I now see ML beat you to it!
GAC said,
November 6, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
"In Stargate SG-1 they referred to the planets by alphanumeric designators. It was a running gag for a while that Jack couldn't ever remember them."
Those designators were representative of the Gate's coordinate system, with a separate letter or number assigned to each symbol on the Stargate ring (which has 36 coordinate symbols plus the point of origin). In other words, a system not available for the real world.
Doesn't this create a problem for other languages? I know that Chinese uses descriptive names for the gods used for planets beyond Saturn (the planets visible to the naked eye are named for the five Daoist elemnents: water, metal, fire, wood, and earth), so that Neptune becomes 海王星 "sea-king star". If multiple sea gods end up getting used for planets, it could get a bit messy. The current numerical system could work, or the star-name + planet number system for stars that have names (though the greek-letter named stars would make for some extra confusing fun).
Anton Sherwood said,
August 3, 2010 @ 2:29 am
How about pulling syllables from a hat?
This seems as near as I'll ever come to an appropriate place to mention this idea of mine: To name features on a new-found planet, first generate phoneme-salad and then run the results through a series of randomly-chosen sound-shifts, applying each shift to a randomly-chosen hemisphere. After enough iterations, the names will take on distinct regional flavors, as if different languages were spoken there. (Note that this simulates a Wellentheorie model!)