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Thread: Naming Planets

  1. #1
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    Naming Planets

    OK, I know that this isn't very likely to happen, but say that you were the first person to see a tenth planet in our solar system and you got the privilege of naming it, what would you call it?

    I'd name it Bob. Same with a new dinosaur.

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    Snowball I

    (assuming it's an ice-dwarf)

  3. #3
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    Proserpina - wife of Pluto.

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    Proserpina is a good one, actually;

    a lot of people already have decided upon Persephone, another name for the same person I think-
    which is a good reason not to choose Persephone.

    If you are going to choose a name, be original.

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    Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator......

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kaptain K
    Proserpina - wife of Pluto.
    Sorry. There's already an asteroid called Proserpina.

  7. #7
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    Persephone was the wife of Hades and has been used in SF for decades. Since Pluto is the Latin equivalent of the Greek Hades, I figured that for consistancy, Proserpina was the better choice. 8)

  8. #8
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    British astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered Uranus, and promptly named it George, for the King of England. For this act of esteem toward his Sovereign, Herschel was awarded a life appointment as a royal astronomer and more importantly a nice residence and a sizable pension to go with it. Less deferential heads prevailed and the convention that had been used for the other planets was continued.

    In hope of meeting a similar fate, I would also name the planet George.

  9. #9
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    Glommina

  10. #10
    The naming of the moons of jupiter was actualy a intertesting encounter.


    from: http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo...atellites.html

    " The naming of the satellites provides an interesting example of how such matters were handled before the foundation of the International Astronomical Union in the twentieth century. As their discoverer, Galileo claimed the right to name the satellites. He wanted to name them after his patrons and asked whether they would prefer "Cosmic Stars" (after Cosimo II) or "Medicean Stars." They opted for the latter, and through much of the seventeenth century they were known by that name. In his notebooks, Galileo referred to them individually by number, starting with the satellite closest to Jupiter, but he never had occasion to refer to them in this way in print.

    In Provence, Nicholas Claude Fabri de Peiresc tried to differentiate between the Medicean Stars by assigning them the names of individual members of the family, but this system was not published and thus was never used by others. In his Mundus Iovialis ("Jovian World") of 1614, Simon Marius went into the naming problem in some depth. First, he himself used the numerical system beginning with the satellite closest to Jupiter. Second, he thought that he might call them after his patron, the Duke of Brandenburg -- a suggestion followed by no one. Third, he suggested naming the farthest satellite the Saturn of Jupiter, the next one the Jupiter of Jupiter, the third one the Venus of Jupiter, and the one nearest the planet the Mercury of Jupiter. This cumbersome system never caught on. Finally, Marius related a suggestion by Kepler:

    " Jupiter is much blamed by the poets on account of his irregular loves. Three maidens are especially mentioned as having been clandestinely courted by Jupiter with success. Io, daughter of the River, Inachus, Callisto of Lycaon, Europa of Agenor. Then there was Ganymede, the handsome son of King Tros, whom Jupiter, having taken the form of an eagle, transported to heaven on his back, as poets fabulously tell . . . . I think, therefore, that I shall not have done amiss if the First is called by me Io, the Second Europa, the Third, on account of its majesty of light, Ganymede, the Fourth Callisto . . . ."

    This fancy, and the particular names given, were suggested to me by Kepler, Imperial Astronomer, when we met at Ratisbon fair in October 1613. So if, as a jest, and in memory of our friendship then begun, I hail him as joint father of these four stars, again I shall not be doing wrong. [3]

    None of these suggestion caught on because with Jupiter's satellites, there was no confusion in the numbering system. Following Galileo and Marius, astronomers simply referred to them by number. With the satellites of Saturn, however, a problem developed. In 1655 Huygens discovered the first and largest; then in 1671-72 Giandomenico Cassini discovered two more, and in 1684 yet another two. These five satellites were numbered like their Galilean counterparts. But when in 1789 William Herschel discovered two additional satellites internal to the first, confusion followed. Did one now renumber them all (thus causing confusion for those who consulted older works), refer to the two new ones as nos. 6 and 7 (thus making the order of the satellites confusing), or refer to them by order of discovery (equally confusing as to order)? Herschel's son, John Frederick William, suggested in 1847 that Saturn's satellites be given individual names of mythological figures associated with Saturn after the suggestion made by Marius for Jupiter's satellites. When, the following year, William Lassel and George Bond independently discovered an eighth satellite of Saturn, they agreed to adopt the naming system proposed by Herschel, in which Saturn's satellites were named after his brothers and sisters, the Titans. This system and the now revived suggestion by Kepler and Marius for Jupiter quickly became the convention for naming the satellites of the superior planets.
    "

    [added quotes and bolding to the quote]



    a new planet? I would name it after my Fiancee. :-)

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by eburacum45
    Proserpina is a good one, actually;

    a lot of people already have decided upon Persephone, another name for the same person I think-
    which is a good reason not to choose Persephone.

    If you are going to choose a name, be original.
    Proserpina would have been a good choice for the companion of Pluto, no?

    What about the Greek goddess Hecate, who rescued Persephone from the underworld? She was out there too. Of course, we'd use the Roman equivalent of Hecate, as usual.

    It'd make a great trivia question.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by kilopi
    ...What about the Greek goddess Hecate, who rescued Persephone from the underworld? She was out there too. Of course, we'd use the Roman equivalent of Hecate, as usual...
    Hi there,
    Your own asteroid* would work (if it wasn't already named,) but only if the new world's orbit were circular. :wink:


    * Asteroid No. 3142 "Kilopi"

  13. #13
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    Bolobo, Pluton, Croesus, Digit, Cambyses, Audobon, Hammerstein, Twinkle, Rachel, Stapledon, De Bourgainville, Danzig, Roanoke, Guanche, Gripler, Diwali, Hammurabi, Silence, Zennor, Ribblehead, Anomie...

    the good thing about being a worldbuilder is you get to name your own planets.

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    I would name it KBO II. Wouldn't that cause an uproar! :wink: =D>

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    Quote Originally Posted by kilopi
    What about the Greek goddess Hecate, who rescued Persephone from the underworld? She was out there too. Of course, we'd use the Roman equivalent of Hecate, as usual.
    There's already an asteroid called Hekate.

  16. #16
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    What about the Greek goddess Hecate, who rescued Persephone from the underworld? She was out there too. Of course, we'd use the Roman equivalent of Hecate, as usual.
    As far as I can determine, Hecate was her name in both Greek and Roman. 8-[

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Astronot
    British astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered Uranus, and promptly named it George, for the King of England. For this act of esteem toward his Sovereign, Herschel was awarded a life appointment as a royal astronomer and more importantly a nice residence and a sizable pension to go with it. Less deferential heads prevailed and the convention that had been used for the other planets was continued.

    In hope of meeting a similar fate, I would also name the planet George.
    Tony.

  18. #18
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    MONGO!

    -------------------------------------------------
    Live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse

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    While we're on the subject, why are we not naming Exoplanets yet?

    As far as a tenth planet in this system, it will most likely be a double KBO set, so I'll put my vote in for Demeter, with the smaller body, whether another planet or a moon being named Persephone. Nothing like straddling the old boy with his mother in law. :P

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    Vulcan.

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    Mongo?

    Santamaria!

    :-?

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    Snorch.

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    Trouble is virtually every Greek and Roman goodess's name has already been given to an asteroid.

    http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/cata...oid_names.html

  25. #25
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    Astarte would be great, or Ishtar to provide another spelling. Finding unused Greek names gets hard, and Babylonian mythology is much cooler.

    I've read some story about an asteroid named Baal once... can't remember what it was, but it seemed to hit or threaten to hit Earth. Nice...

    Of course, writing/drawing a scifi comic (nevermind the link, it's outdated and the new page has yet to go up) has the same advances as being a worldbuilder... hey, eburacum45, how much work is that being part of the site? It sounds quite interesting to me, but I should be strapped in time for the next at least 8 months (thesis! )...


  26. #26
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    As much or as little as you want to put in; there's plenty of stars in the sky,
    but some people prefer to write stories or make illustrations; we have some games in development too.


    Kaptain K yes, Proserpina was a good choice; unfortunately most of the good names are gone, if not for asteroids and moons, then for craters and surface features on moons and planets.

    Still, a good source of names can be found here;
    http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/

  27. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by jokergirl
    Finding unused Greek names gets hard, and Babylonian mythology is much cooler.
    Dangerous line of reasoning. It could lead us to naming the planet 'Nibiru'.

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