by Doris Vickers (Vienna)
Maybe you have thought about purchasing a star name for yourself of somebody you know before. However, the International Astronomical Union, the association for professional astronomers, has an official body (the Working Group on Star Names), which formally recognises and catalogues star names and compiles a list of IAU-approved unique star names. Any name that is not on this list is not officially recognised and not valid.
Antique origins of star names
It is probably best to use an example to trace the history of a star name and I have decided to use the constellation Ursa Minor, which is better known nowadays as the Little Bear or Little Dipper. Ursa Minor has four stars with proper names and these are (in order of brightness): Kochab, Yildun and Polaris.
One of the earliest mentions of the constellation Ursa Minor takes us back to the 3rd century BCE, when Ancient Greek poet Aratos wrote his lenghty poem Phainomena about the constellations, the myths behind them and their location in the sky and relative positions to one another. Quite naturally, he starts his poem at the North Pole and the constellations of the Big and Little Bear are up first:
The numerous stars, scattered in different directions, sweep all alike across the sky every day continuously for ever. The axis, however, does not move even slightly from its place, but just stays for ever fixed, holds the earth in the centre evenly balanced, and rotates the sky itself. Two poles terminate it at the two ends; but one is not visible, while the opposite one in the north is high above the horizon.
On either side of it two Bears wheel in unison, and so they are called the Wagons. They keep their heads for ever pointing to each other’s loins, and for ever they move with shoulders leading, aligned towards the shoulders, but in opposite directions. If the tale is true, these Bears ascended to the sky from Crete by the will of great Zeus, because when he was a child then in fragrant Lyctus near Mount Ida, they deposited him in a cave and tended him for the year, while the Curetes of Dicte kept Cronus deceived.
Now one of the Bears men call Kynosoura by name, the other Helike. Helike is the one by which Greek men at sea judge the course to steer their ships, while Phoenicians cross the sea relying on the other.
Now the one is clear and easy to identify, Helike, being visible in all its grandeur as soon as night begins; the other is slight, yet a better guide to sailors, for it revolves entirely in a smaller circle: so by it the Sidonians sail the straightest course.
Aratos, Phainomena v.19-44, translation Douglas Kidd.
As you can see, Aratos had names for the constellations, but not for the individual stars. In the case of the Little Bear, however, he does mention that the Phoenicians and Sidonians (by Sidonians Aratos also means Phoenicians, but the Ancient Greeks did not like word repetitions) used the Little Bear for navigation.
A little after Aratos, Eratosthenes wrote the Katasterismoi, which contained not only a star catalogue, but also the star lore of the 44 constellations. The enumeration of the constellations sticks to the order that Aratos presented them in, so the Little Bear comes right after the Big Bear. Eratosthenes‘ original unfortunately is not extant, but we have a summary from the 1st or 2nd century CE, which is nowadays known as the Epitome Catasterismorum by Pseudo-Eratosthenes, in which the myths are abbreviated and a stellar catalogue is added:
This is the Bear called the „Lesser“. Most men call her Phoinike. She was honoured by Artemis, who upon learning that Zeus had violated her, changed her into a wild animal. Later, after Phoinike was saved, it is said that Artemis bestowed glory on her by placing another image among the stars so that she received double honors.
Aglaosthenes, in his Naxika, says that this constellation is Kynosoura, one of the Idaian nymphs and the nurse of Zeus. From her the harbour and the area surrounding it in the city called Histoi, which was founded by the followers of Nikostratos, were named Kynosoura.
Aratos calls her Helike and says that she was from Krete, also that she was the nurse of Zeus and was therefore adjudged worthy of honour in heaven. The Lesser Bear has four bright stars at the corners of the square, and three bright stars on the tail, making a total of seven. Beneath the second of the two westernmost stars, there is another star, named Polos, around which the entire universe appears to revolve.
Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Epitome Catasterismorum
Not only are the two names for the constellation, Kynosoura and Helike, now joined by a third one – Phoenike (the „Phoenician constellation“), but Eratosthenes also knows of a proper name for one of the stars: Polos.
Medieval reduction of constellation and star names
In the early 8th century CE, Charlemagne had a star catalogue compiled to be used in the various astronomical calculations for the date of Easter (a science called Computus). The Christian scribes used commentaries to the Latin translations of Aratos‘ Phainomena to compile their catalogue called De Ordine ac Positione Stellarum in Signis („About the Order and Position of Stars in the Signs“), but decided to censor out the pagan constellation myths – this left the bare decriptions of the stars in their constellations, which we have already seen in Pseudo-Eratosthenes. They added beautiful illustrations of the constellations, of which I have picked the earliest one (from a manuscript in Madrid on the left) and one of the latest ones (from a manuscript in Vienna on the right) below:
By now, the Little Bear had only one name left – Cynosura, which is the Latinised version of the Ancient Greek Kynosoura, and the star name Polos has also been transcribed to Latin Polus.
The advent of star catalogues
I have rather generously called Pseudo-Eratosthenes and De Ordine a „star catalogue“, when in fact this is not what we would call star catalogue nowadays, because it is missing precise coordinates to pinpoint the exact location of a star in the sky. Proper star catalogues did not really exist on a large scale in Medieval Europe, until a Latin translation of an Arabic translation of a Greek star catalogue came along in 1125 CE: Ptolemy’s star catalogue from the 2nd century CE got „lost“ (i.e. forgotten) in Europe, was preserved by the Arabs and translated into Arabic and brought back to Europe in the 12th century. It was first translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona between 1150 and 1190 CE. Greek translations were also made later. The Almagest, as it is more famously known under its Arabic name – looks an awful lot like we imagine a star catalogue nowadays:
As you can tell, this text contains no star lore and constellation myths whatsoever, and consists of a bare list of stars within a constellation, their longitude and latitude and brightness. See if you can spot Polos, Polus or something along those lines. Hint: you will not find a single proper star name. Because of the scientific accuracy of this catalogue however, the Almagest prevailed in Europe and texts like De Ordine disappeared – along with the star names they contained. But people continued to read old texts, of course, so not all names were completely lost. Petrus Apianus published his Cosmographicus Liber in 1524 and added a Stella Polaris („Polar star“) in an illustration of the Polar region:
This was taken up by Gemma Frisius in his De Astrolabo Catholico liber in the 1550s and adapted to stella illa quae polaris dictur („star, which is called Polar“) … and it stuck! We still call the star Polaris and the Working Group on Star Names of the International Astronomical Union confirmed it in 2016 in their first batch of approved star names. There currently are 451 approved star names and many more that have yet to be approved, and there is a story for each one of these star names – there is enough material to fill several books, but I hope I have been able to give you an small insight into the fascinating world of star names.
Further reading
- Australian Indigenous Star Names
- Ian Ridpath’s Star Tales (a treasure trove of constellation myths and star lore!)
About the author
Doris Vickers is a Classical Philologist and currently pursuing a PhD about Wilhelm Schickard’s Astroscopium, a text dating to 1623 that deals with contemporary issues of astronomy, star names and star maps. During her research, she often comes across interesting factoids that she would like to share with you here. She is also an associate member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and the Etymology Task Group Chairperson of the Working Group on Star Names (WGSN).