[X] My Assistant

[Greg Hullender]

So you decided to go with "apohestion" instead of "aphestion"? The rule (in Greek) would be to use ap- instead of apo- before a vowel or an 'h'-plus-vowel. Note we have "aphelion" not "apohelion". But, on the other hand although "apapsis" is used, "apoapsis" is 12 times as common.

Not that it matters that much. Whatever the Dawn team decides to use in their publications will determine "correct" usage thereafter.

Ceres presents considerably more interesting naming challenges. Should the cererean periapsis called peridemetrion? :-)

--Greg

[dmuller]

So you decided to go with "apohestion" instead of "aphestion"?

I didn't make any decision here, just used the little I could remember from an earlier discussion here. Besides it sounds better than series 1 and series 2 as printed in the pdf doc! Given the language developments across the globe (i.e. the shortening of everything), maybe we should just call it apo and peri.

[djellison]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=society+of+literary+pedants

That is all.

[Greg Hullender]

As a linguist, I'm much more interested in studying the patterns in how people actually do talk and not all that interested in telling them how they ought to talk. The "pedants" who do try to enforce such rules tend to be surpisingly ignorant of linguistics, in my experience, and the "rules" they want to enforce are generally not well-thought-out, as Doug's link shows.

However, when one is trying to create entirely new words, there is something to be said for offering information to the effect of "this is what would be consistent with similar words that already exist." For example, English generally using the Latin nominative form to get the names of planets (e.g. Mars, Jupiter) and the Latin Genitive to get the corresponding adjectives (Martian, Jovian). From that, one would expect "Cererean" for Ceres. That doesn't mean anyone will actually use it, though. Note that we'd expect "Venerean" for Venus, but scientists actually use "Venusian" instead. That doesn't make it "wrong"; it simply means it has a different derivation.

As I said earlier, whatever the Dawn team uses in their publications (if they are consistent) will almost certainly determine the offical terms for these things. In the meantime, I plan to watch with great interest. :-)

--Greg

[stevesliva]

Did anyone double-check the Greek (or is it Grecian?) analogues (or is it analogs?) to Ceres and Vesta? Demeter and Hestia were rather quick assumptions on my part.

[Explorer1]

The only time I ever wonder about these linguistic things (in space issues at least) is when referring to 'Titanian' features; there's no way to distinguish between the moons of Saturn and Uranus with such similar names. On the Wikipedia page they are identical...

[Hungry4info]

How does "Titanese" sound to you?

[Vultur]

Demeter and Hestia were rather quick assumptions on my part.

They are correct, Ceres = Demeter and Vesta = Hestia.

Interestingly, of the 4 big asteroids (1 Ceres, 2 Pallas, 3 Juno, 4 Vesta) Pallas is the only one with a Greek name. After the 4 big ones Greek names rapidly became common though (5 Astraea, 7 Iris, 10 Hygeia, 14 Irene, 15 Eunomia).

Note that we'd expect "Venerean" for Venus, but scientists actually use "Venusian" instead. That doesn't make it "wrong"; it simply means it has a different derivation.

This is because the proper adjectival form would be 'Venereal', which is not used for obvious reasons. The adjectival form for Venus was an open question for a while -- 'Venerian' and 'Cytherean' (the latter formed from Cytherea, one of Aphrodite's other names/epithets) are often found in older works -- but eventually the grating and uneuphonious, but simple, 'Venusian' was settled on.

In the same way 'Martial' was preoccupied in English, so the adjective for the planet Mars is instead 'Martian'.

The only time I ever wonder about these linguistic things (in space issues at least) is when referring to 'Titanian' features; there's no way to distinguish between the moons of Saturn and Uranus with such similar names. On the Wikipedia page they are identical...

Hmm. That is indeed troublesome.

The best I can come up with is 'Titanic' for Titan, 'Titanian' for Titania.

[Explorer1]

Maybe rename Titania? It would need to be Shakespearean but there's still many left. Perhaps Othello....
Are there IAU provisions for renaming celestial bodies?

[nprev]

Yes, there are; in fact, the IAU is the sole internationally recognized authority for naming celestial bodies & the features thereof.

I don't see them renaming Titania...or anything else.

[Phil Stooke]

Aaaargh! This is like the -ology argument... 'you can't call study of moon rocks geology' and so on.


These ideas make sense when you have a handful of cases to deal with but not when there might be a hundred cases. Do we really want to say geology, selenology, areology, hermology... and then try to remember all those names for the -ologies of every moon of Saturn, when it's all just one kind of study? This argument was thrashed out in the 1960s, notably by Luciano Ronca at Wayne State University. It was settled along the lines of simplicity - we can use the generic 'planetology' or extend geology to all worlds by pointing out that 'geo-' means land, not Earth (and then 'Earth' only by extension)

Same here. Do we want a 'periitokawion? No, we do not... there's a perfectly good pair of generic terms for all apo-thingies and peri-thingies, and they are:

apoapsis

periapsis

- where we refer to the point on the orbit, not the body underneath it.

Phil


PS - rename Titania? Maybe better rename asteroid 593 Titania while we're at it! The best solution is to rely on context to distinguish them, or not to use the adjective when it's ambiguous, saying 'craters of Titan' (etc.) instead.

[djellison]

"Aaaargh"

I endorse that message, and clearly some people totally missed the message behind my LMGTFY link.

[stevesliva]

Aaaargh! This is like the -ology argument... 'you can't call study of moon rocks geology' and so on.

You can't call this an "argument!"

[ElkGroveDan]

Here

[nprev]

Hear, hear!!!