Male Names on Venus Options

[PhilHorzempa]

Does anyone know the method by which one could submit suggested
names for features on Venus? My hope is that whoever controls this process
will start to consider Men's names for those features. There is a total of one male
name on Venus now - Maxwell Montes. The remaining features are all female.

I know that this was done to make up for all those male names on the Moon and
Mars. However, I think that, while meant to be fair, this exclusion is simply sexist.
To exclude ALL men's names from Venus' surface is a disservice to history.
Also, sexism, in any form, is just not right.

There are a number of men who figured prominently in the exploration of Venus.
Lomonosov and Huygens are a couple that come to mind. They should be immortalized
on the surface of the planet that they sought to explore.

Any more suggestions out there?


Another Phil

[Phil Stooke]

As Venus is the only one of the five classical planet-deities to have a female identity, purely female names are entirely appropriate. There is no discrimination here, and you are mistaken in thinking that this is just a mechanism for redressing an earlier injustice (though it does have that effect).

However, if you want to proceed, draw up a list of suitable names and submit them to the head of the Venus task group of IAU's Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature, who is George Burba of the Vernadsky Institute in Moscow. I can tell you it will not be easy to get any action on this - Lomonosov has his lunar crater already, why should he get another feature on Venus? Similarly Huygens is on Mars.

The first person to draw a map of Venus (or in fact any planet other than Earth) was F. Bianchini. I once suggested naming a crater after him, but by the sneaky mechanism of finding a female Bianchini to get past the gatekeeper. And there are a few possible people.. but it didn't go anywhere.

Phil

[tedstryk]

Lomonosov and Huygens also have prominent craters on Mars.

[angel1801]

Could all the men who contributed to the exploration of Venus or took part in major expeditions to observe transits of Venus from 1631 to 1882 be named on Mercury on the hemisphere Mariner 10 did not see?

It would be very fitting to have a whole area on Mercury that honored people who contributed in the area of planetary transits of Mercury and Venus.

[PhilHorzempa]

I'm not sure that some of you get it. The only reason that Huygens or Sagan
do not have craters or coronae named after them on Venus is because they
are men. That is the ONLY reason. That is the definition of gender discrimination
which is illegal in most professions in the United States.

Also, it does not matter that a crater on another planet has that same name, as
there are numerous instances of "double naming" on the Moon and Mars, e.g.,
Antoniadi, Copernicus, Hipparchus, Kepler, Korolev, Lyot, Nansen, Pasteur, Ptolemaeus,
Rutherford, Sklodowska, Tycho.
There are also Kuiper craters on both Mars and Mercury.

The point is that Humans, whether they are Male or Female, who contributed to
our exploration of Venus, should be immortalized on that planet. I believe that one
day, after terrraforming, humans will be living on Venus. They will be using the place
names that we now are putting on Venus. In that distant future, they may wonder why
we ignored many of the pioneers that revealed that planet to humanity.


Another Phil

[tedstryk]

This isn't the way it is done except with craters on Mercury and Mars. All the outer solar system worlds have naming schemes (such has fire gods/goddesses for Io), and Mercury's craters are named after artists, composers, philosophers, etc. And other features generally aren't named after people. So it isn't that people don't get it. It simply isn't discrimination.

[kenny]

Some years ago, when the naming of Venusian features was at a frenzy as a result of what Magellan revealed, they had run out of goddesses et al and were looking for new names. The "all female" rule was being insisted upon. I suggested some female mountaineers' names for mountain features, and some got accepted. But I was especially keen to see Laika, the bitch who was the first dog and first living creature in space, be acknowledged on this "female" plant. They refused, saying they must all be human, a principle which is not held to elsewhere. One Uranian moon has features named after places in Shakespeare's plays, for instance. Laika deserves a crater somewhere, in my view. Maybe also dogs Strelka, Belka, Ham the chimp and the rest of the pioneering animals.

Whaddaya think?

Kenny

[Canopus]

I know that this was done to make up for all those male names on the Moon and
Mars. However, I think that, while meant to be fair, this exclusion is simply sexist.
To exclude ALL men's names from Venus' surface is a disservice to history.
Also, sexism, in any form, is just not right.

True. And what a pity it was men who started the trend.

The point is that Humans, whether they are Male or Female, who contributed to
our exploration of Venus, should be immortalized on that planet.

True. So let's get some female names on Mars and the Moon.

Fair's fair, right?