[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

[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.

[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.

[Greg Hullender]

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'.

You have confused astronomy with astrology.

The -al derivations (on the Latin Genitive) correspond to attributes associated with the astrological influence of the planet. Hence we have mercurial, venereal, martial, and jovial, (but saturnine, not saturnal) and we don't have uranal, neptunal, or cereal. (Not with those meanings, anyway.) ;-)

The -an derivations (also from the Latin Genitive) refer to properties of the planet itself, as I said earlier. To argue otherwise, you have to claim that ALL of the adjectives for the planets are "preoccupied" somehow, and this is clearly absurd.

--Greg