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Comment by fvrghl | Hacker News Reader

Seems like they should rename it at this point.

The naming conventions/protocols are fairly fixed at this point see [1], but this name absolutely fits the convention for this class of object

Quoting Wikipedia:

Other trans-Neptunian objects (such as 50000 Quaoar), including classical Kuiper belt objects, are given mythological or mythic names (not necessarily from Greek or Roman mythology), particularly those associated with creation.

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From a physx article [2]

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Consistent with the IAU conventions for naming non-resonant Kuiper Belt Objects after creator deities, the object was given the name Quaoar after the Tongva creator god. The Tongva people (otherwise known as the Mission Indians) are native to the area around Los Angeles, where the discovery of Quaoar was made.

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I see no reason why names need to fit the sensibilities of English speakers

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_naming_convention...

[2] https://phys.org/news/2015-08-dwarf-planet-quaoar.html

I'd have preferred a name from classical roman/greek religion to keep the theme going, but Quaoar is still a mythical name so at least it partially fits the theme. But why should rings matter?

I'm glad they are getting away from roman/greek gods. Space should not be limited by eurocentrism.

Other cultures already have other names for the planets, no? Roman pantheism is a long dead religion anyway.

NASA is not part of the roman/greek culture, but uses those names.

I was referring to the implied "euro" culture which you brought up by saying these names are "eurocentric". Obviously NASA aren't Romans. What does NASA have to do with it anyway? Isn't it the National Observatory in Brazil that is primarily responsible for the observations of this planet? NASA doesn't own space.

No, other cultures do not have a name for an extrasolar planet just discovered.

Moreover, the extant names from the Roman pantheon are universal within the international scientific community. They are also nearly exhausted.

I find it tedious to reject names from other pantheons. Not least because they are exceptionally cool - Quaoar and ʻOumuamua are stellar and divine names. Of all things, should not astronomy inspire us to grok human culture as a global and syncretic whole, as opposed to a parochial set of divisions in which English speakers may only use Greco-Roman gods?

Whoa there, I don't reject the Quaoar name. I said it's fine, it fits the theme well enough. I only expressed a preference that they stuck with roman/greek names. I don't think they're running out of those, I clicked a few at random on wikipedia's list and the ones I happened to click didn't have corresponding planets yet.

They could have named it Terminus, or Fontus, or Quirinus, or Vejovis, or... But whatever.

This isn't a planet though, why should it get a planet's name?

Perseverance landed near crater Jezero, named after a tiny municipality in Bosnia (~1100 population). It's not the only Mars crater named after tiny towns around the world, but the fact that jezero means lake in many Slavic languages had a lot to do with this particular selection. There's also four valleys near the crater named after Bosnian rivers (Neretva, Sava, Pliva, Una).

Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that the space community is definitely thinking more globally nowadays and that it absolutely works. We went from no particular interest in astronomy amongst general population to meticulously following Perseverance's every step.

To your question, no not entirely anyway. Other cultures might have traditional names for the visible stars and planets, but the heavenly bodies that were discovered by telescope basically just have the names they were given by their discoverers.

For example in Japanese, the visible planets have names that align with their own pre-Columbian traditions, e.g. Mars is named "Kasei" which means Firestar and Jupiter is named "Mokusei" which means Treestar. But when you get to planets discovered in modern times, Uranus, Neptune and demoted Pluto, they're respectively "Tennousei (Heavenly-King Star)", "Kaiousei (Sea-King Star)", and "Meiousei (Hades-King Star)", which are directly derived from the Western names given by their discoverers.

Now imagine the thousands of smaller named bodies in the Solar System, nobody's going to be bothered to come up with independent names for all of them for every culture, it would be too confusing. Imagine if everyone used native-tongue keywords in programming languages. Someone would send you a Python progam in French and it would be littered with sinon, sauf, Vrai, etc. While it might be convenient for the native speaker working alone, it would be a nightmare for interoperability.

Thus, newly discovered heavently bodies are referred to by the designations approved by the International Astronomical Union, in this case via its Working Group - Small Bodies Nomenclature.

> Someone would send you a Python progam in French and it would be littered with sinon, sauf, Vrai, etc. While it might be convenient for the native speaker working alone, it would be a nightmare for interoperability.

When you think about it, would it actually matter?

The AST would be the same. As long as identifiers are defined for multiple locales it would be trivial to translate.

The only language I know of that's tried this is AppleScript. Otherwise this makes it too hard to read sample code/documentation, and MTL isn't good at translating keywords consistently.

> Roman pantheism is a long dead religion anyway.

That's Yamnaya/PIE pantheism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyēus

It's coming back though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenism_(modern_religion)

I'm pretty sure they have all been used by this point. Expanding to other cultures is the best way to keep with the theme.

> to keep the theme going

It is consistent, planets are from Roman or Greek, dwarf planets are roughly gods of creation regardless of mythology.

Other dwarf planets include Sedna (Inuit), Haumea (Hawaii), Makemake (Easter Islands), Gonggong (China), Orcus (Etruscan, but also Roman).

Though Pluto and Eris are intentional exceptions because they were thought to be planets for a long time.

Makes sense, thanks. If they're sticking to a pattern, then I'm satisfied.

The moons of Uranus are William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope characters.

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