by Mary Hrovat
In the shapeless but often suggestive scatter of stars across a dark night sky, humans have picked out patterns and woven countless tales around them, giving the brighter stars names for their place in these stories. The star names we use today can be fascinating but also baffling—which is not surprising, considering that they’ve evolved over centuries in various languages.
Most of the traditional star names known to Western science have Arabic, Greek, or Latin roots. Some of these names have fairly straightforward meanings, although the connections are not always obvious. Orange-red Antares, for example, is named for its resemblance to Mars (the name can be translated as rival of Mars). Regulus means little king; the star has long been associated with royalty, and it’s in the constellation Leo, the lion (king of the beasts). Spica is the brightest star in the constellation Virgo (the maiden); its name is derived from a Latin term for an ear of wheat, because of the constellation’s identification with a Greco-Roman goddess of agriculture. It has been identified with many other female deities over time.
There’s also a star in Virgo named Vindemiatrix, which translates from the Latin as grape gatherer, because in classical times, when it was named, the Sun was in Virgo during the grape harvest. A star in Lyra (the lyre) is named Sulaphat, which is derived from an Arabic word for tortoise. It puzzled me to learn this; the reason is that lyres were often made from tortoise shells. The name of Arcturus, in the constellation Boötes (the herdsman), is derived from a Greek term meaning guardian of the bear, for several possible reasons involving myths about bears.
Many of the star names derived from Arabic represent the star’s location within a constellation. The star indicating the tail of Leo is named Denebola, and that representing the tail of Cygnus (the swan) is Deneb. Achernar, in the constellation Eridanus (the river) is named for its position at the river’s end. Cancer (the crab) has a star called Acubens, which is derived from the Arabic word for claws.
Humans have sorted the stars into many groupings over the millennia, and the human-named night sky is a vast palimpsest full of odd remnants of old constellations and asterisms. For example, Zubeneschamali and Zubenelgenubi (the northern and southern claws, respectively), along with Zubenelakrab, the scorpion’s claw, appear in the constellation Libra (the scales). The names date back to a time when the stars were considered to be part of the neighboring constellation of Scorpius. Auriga is said to represent a charioteer, but it has long been associated with goatherds as well, and its brightest star is named Capella, which translates as little she-goat. The Pleiades, a star cluster in the constellation Taurus containing hundreds of stars, is named for a group of seven sisters in Greek mythology, although only six of the stars are visible to the naked eye.
Everything I’ve said above could probably be said in much finer detail, or an alternative explanation or derivation might be given. The history of star and constellation nomenclature is complex.
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Even among the stars visible to the naked eye in a dark sky, most don’t have proper names (or if they do, they’re not known to most Westerners). The International Astronomical Union (IAU) currently lists only 451 such stars.
For astronomical purposes, stars go by designations indicating their place in some scheme or catalog. Early in the 17th century, Johann Bayer assigned Greek letters to label the stars in each constellation approximately from brightest to dimmest (alpha to omega). Alpha Centauri may be the best-known of the Bayer designations. John Flamsteed was the first to compile a major star catalog using a telescope. The final version of his work, which was published in 1725, assigned numbers to stars within each constellation.
Beginning in the 19th century, global-scale surveys with increasingly larger telescopes produced various star catalogs. The catalog designations for stars generally consist of a brief catalog ID (for example, HD for the Henry Draper catalog assembled at Harvard College Observatory) followed by a number. There are also systems for labeling binary stars, variable stars, and novae and supernovae.
Astronomers know many stars by their designations rather than by proper names. For example, although Beta Lyrae, an active star system, has the common name Sheliak, astronomers rarely use it. Beta Lyrae’s main pair of stars orbit each other closely; they’re oriented almost edge-on to our line of sight, and the light we see varies as the two stars cross in front of each other. It’s a prototype for that class of variable star; in addition, the stars are so close to each other that one is slowly transferring its mass to the other, making it an interesting object of study. Amateur astronomers also know Epsilon Lyrae, a multiple star system containing at least five stars. It’s also known as the Double Double, because two of the pairs can be viewed using instruments available to amateurs.
Several stars that are very important in the history of astronomy go by designations rather than proper names. 61 Cygni was the first star other than the Sun to which the distance was measured. It’s close enough to Earth that Friedrich Bessel was able to measure its distance using parallax (the tiny difference in position between two observations six months apart, when Earth is at opposite points in its orbit). Delta Cephei is a variable star in the constellation Cepheus. It’s the prototype for Cepheid variables, which have stable periods that depend on the star’s luminosity. Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered the period–luminosity relationship, which made it possible to measure the distances to stars that are much further away than 61 Cygni.
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Star names, like any proper names, become surrounded with a nimbus of associations. Vega, Deneb, and Altair make up a very well-known asterism called the Summer Triangle. For me, their names conjure up memories of heat, humidity, and mosquitos, as well as the story of the constellation Lyra (which is part of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) and the various facts I know about the stars themselves. The winter constellation Orion calls to mind cold dry air and the crunch of snow underfoot, as well as knowledge about the Orion nebula and the fact that Betelgeuse is a red giant. However, the nomenclature I know, based largely on Greco-Roman mythology and using Greco-Roman and Arabic names, represents only one of the many starry skies humans have known. As dear and familiar as these names are to me, I’d like to know how others have named the stars.
The IAU’s Working Group on Star Names was established in 2016 to standardize and catalog star names and add new proper names from a broader range of cultures than most of the star names in common use in the West. These new names are being applied to stars that previously didn’t have a proper name. Several lists of newly named stars have been published in recent years. In addition, in 2019, a list of new star names was published by another committee of the IAU after a public naming campaign for exoplanets and their stars.
The new names are not traditionally associated with these stars; still, they expand our view of the sky beyond the largely Western European nomenclature that’s been used in scientific communication worldwide. The spirit reflected in the choices reminds me of the broad selection of global music and speech recorded on the Voyager Golden Record.
Some of the new names represent deities. Others are ancient place names, such as Lusitânia, an earlier name of much of what is now Portugal. Three of the newly named stars are named for UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Citadelle, for Citadelle Laferrière in Haiti; Petra, for the ancient city in Jordan; and Titawin, for the settlement in Morocco now known as the historical district of Tétouan. Others are named for figures in mythology and literature. In a rare example of a star named for a person, Mahsati is named for a (possibly semi-legendary) female Persian poet of medieval times. Solaris is named for the novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem. Sterrennacht is named for van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night.
Some of the names represent plants, animals, or natural features. Wouri is named for a river in Cameroon, and Mpingo is named for a tree (Dalbergia melanoxylon) that grows in Tanzania and is used to make musical instruments. Añañuca is named for a wildflower endemic to central Chile (Phycella cyrtanthoides). Mazaalai is the Mongolian name for the Gobi bear (Ursus arctos gobiensis). There’s also a star newly named Axólotl.
Other new names are words related to stars or light. Funi is an Old Icelandic word for fire. Koeia is the word for star in the Taíno language once spoken by the indigenous people of the Caribbean, and Noquisi is the Cherokee word for star. Naledi means star in several languages of Southern Africa. Maru is a Korean word for sky, and Koit is an Estonian word for dawn.
I especially like the new star names that represent concepts, for example, Emiw (love, in the Makhuwa language spoken in Mozambique), Gakyid (a word meaning happiness, proposed by Bhutan), Itonda (all that is beautiful, in the Myene language of Gabon), and Nikawiy (mother in the Cree language). Two stars are named for peace: Taika (Lithuanian) and Sāmaya (Sinhalese). I don’t know whether to cheer or to cry.
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Further reading:
You can browse an annotated list of the 451 proper names of stars recognized by the IAU at Star Names at the Star Facts site. This list gives information about the sources of many of the new names.
A Dictionary of Modern Star Names: A Short Guide to 254 Star Names and Their Derivations, by Paul Kunitzsch and Tim Smart, is a good reference for the origins of star names.
Burnham’s Celestial Handbook is a three-volume set on constellations and their stars; it provides observing notes, scientific information, and literary and historical information about names and lore. The astronomical information is not up to date, but these old books are still superb for browsing.
Indigenous star maps at the Native Skywatchers site
Aboriginal Australian star maps at the Australian Indigenous Astronomy site
If you know of any other resources (especially books) about star and constellation names from non-European cultures, I’d love to hear about them.
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You can see more of my work at MaryHrovat.com.