[X] My Assistant

[Rob Pinnegar]

One bothersome thing about the naming scheme of Saturn's moons is that the one moon in the Solar System that most obviously deserves to be named after the two-faced god "Janus" ended up being called Iapetus instead. Also, since the mythological Iapetus was the father of Epimetheus, Prometheus, and Atlas, the moon that ended up being called Janus would really be much better suited to being named Iapetus. So, in a way, Janus and Iapetus have got each other's names.

(This all has to do, incidentally, with John Herschel's naming scheme for Saturnian moons, which suggests that they all be named after the Titans. "Janus" doesn't appear on this list, so it didn't get used at first. Of course, the convention didn't stick; it was broken with the naming of Mimas and Enceladus, though some subsequent discoveries have been named after other Titans.)

So I thought I'd start a topic on what Solar System bodies really should have different names, based on the importance of the Greco-Roman gods they are named after, and on information we have access to in the 21st century which the bodies' discoverers didn't know. There isn't much point to this, since obviously the names can't be changed now, but I thought it'd be fun to toss some ideas around.

The only other major change I'd make, if I had my "druthers" (ah there, Walt Kelly) would be to switch the names of the "Big Four" asteroids with those of the Galilean moons. It's kind of silly to name a 250-km asteroid after the Queen of Olympus when there's a body twenty times bigger named after a shepherd.

[Edit: Upon a bit more reflection, I can think of two others. One of these is so glaringly axiomatic to anyone who speaks English that, naturally, I didn't think of it at first. The other is not so obvious and I'll wait to see if anyone else comes up with it.]

[Bob Shaw]

Rob:

A planet which should be renamed? Can't think of any, oh no (snigger).

Why did they name Pluto after Mickey's dog, rather than Mickey himself? If Planet X had been found in the 1930s, would it have been named after Donald Duck's nephews (hey! good names for 'droids!) or would they just have given up after having gone for the dog?

And did you know that the Powers That Be wouldn't allow an asteroid to be named after Frank Zappa, but that they didn't notice Zappafrank?

Call it schoolboy humour, but I've always been so sad that there are no black rings around Neptune.

Bob Shaw

[David]

This is an interesting topic. I don't agree about Iapetus and Janus, though; Janus is two-faced, but both faces are the same! An appropriate mythological name for Iapetus based on its albedo might be Hel, Norse goddess of the underworld, whose face is half black, half white.

Io obviously ought to be Aitne/Aetna or Vulcan or some similar name alluding to Io's many volcanoes.

Many of Jupiter's moons (VI-XII) at one time had unofficial names that referred to other members of the Greek pantheon: Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Poseidon, Hades. Carme at that time was "Pan" and Ananke was "Adrastea". The names were obviously a bit grandiose for such small satellites, but the chosen remedy, sometime around 1974-1975, of replacing their names with the most arcane names of Greek nymphs (many of which can't be found in even specialized dictionaries of mythology) was something of an overreaction.