Peer Inquiry: Diverse Planet Names, or All-Roman?

hey, all. i was going over a part of my ASB ATL's notes document and got to the part detailing outer space. i went to great lengths previously to rename all of the planets (including dwarf planets and the major moons of larger ones) in our solar system, partly because it affects TTL's version of the periodic table. this was part of a deliberate effort on my part to avert an otherwise consistent Roman-inspired naming scheme ITTL.

on further review, though, i'm starting to think that using the all-Roman naming scheme might be the better course of action (assuming a planet is named after mythology--i'm partial to keeping the names of Uranus' moons to what i decided on before, naming them after characters from the Nibelungenlied instead of A Midsummer Night's Dream). so i thought i'd ask for some help in deciding if i should keep the "original" names (which draw from Germanic and Dutch folklore and Egyptian, Finnish, Japanese, Maori, Aztec, and original Greek mythology for anything discovered after the 17th century) or change it to all Roman/Latin names. in any case, the criteria will otherwise be the same as before (where there's no direct analogy in the naming, some other Roman figure or deity will be chosen instead, possibly including the original names of foreign gods incorporated into the Roman pantheon--namely some Celtic ones--as TTL's version of the planets not named after Greco-Roman figures)

any help on this? to clarify, this IS NOT an ASB thread and question, there's no changes to the self-contained TL and planets from OTL for the purposes of discussion.

Which culture is dominant? Because that would help.

Timaeus said:

Which culture is dominant? Because that would help.

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Seconded. It really depends on which institution or institutions are responsible for naming the planets.

The Chinese names could work: Water Star (Mercury), Gold Star (Venus), Ground Ball (Earth), Fire Star (Mars), Wood Star (Jupiter), Clay Star (Saturn).

Bear in mind that the names of the planets up to Saturn go back to antiquity - if your POD is before these Roman names existed, there may not even be a Roman culture in the first place.

You could go Babylonian I suppose

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_planet#Babylonian_astronomy


Or go a bit further out

http://nineplanets.org/days.html

I particularly like Ninib/Ninurta for Saturn and its moons, the rings can be the battlefield strewn with body parts, the moons Ninib's foes

Ninurta slays each of the monsters later known as the "Slain Heroes" (the Warrior Dragon, the Palm Tree King, Lord Saman-ana, the Bison-beast, the Mermaid, the Seven-headed Snake, the Six-headed Wild Ram), and despoils them of valuable items such as Gypsum, Strong Copper, and the Magilum boat.[2] Eventually, Anzû is killed by Ninurta who delivers the Tablet of Destiny to his father, Enlil.

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Timaeus said:

Which culture is dominant? Because that would help.

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Tom Colton said:

Seconded. It really depends on which institution or institutions are responsible for naming the planets.

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it's recognizably similar to OTL for most of it and i had decided that each respective planet is still discovered by the same people (or expys of them for modern ones if for whatever reason i decide it's more plausible that way). i even put all the official discoverers in the table i have listing all these to keep that in mind

Alon said:

Bear in mind that the names of the planets up to Saturn go back to antiquity - if your POD is before these Roman names existed, there may not even be a Roman culture in the first place.

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going into the full POD for the TL would derail the thread what i want to do is discuss this as a self-contained question but no, the POD for naming planets is long after the end of the Roman Empire. the earliest relevant POD for this is in the 17th century since in the old specs with more diverse names, i had Europa as being named after the valkyrie Brunhilda instead of the Greek mythical figure, but that name is up in the air now. if i decide on using mainly Roman names, the POD will technically be in the same period but for different reasons (Ganymede is renamed Catamitus after that character's Roman equivalent, and it goes from there--the first really divergent names after that are from the late 18th century with the Nibelungenlied-based ones i mentioned before, with Oberon being renamed Siegfried, for example)

Artaxerxes said:

You could go Babylonian I suppose

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_planet#Babylonian_astronomy


Or go a bit further out

http://nineplanets.org/days.html

I particularly like Ninib/Ninurta for Saturn and its moons, the rings can be the battlefield strewn with body parts, the moons Ninib's foes

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it's not so much that i'm looking for new planet names right now--i devised all the names i needed for the "more diverse" a long time ago--but Babylonian names could be useful for a specific set of planets, so thanks for that

to reiterate, what i'm mainly asking for help on here is deciding if i should keep the old names drawing from Roman, original Greek, Germanic, Dutch, Norse, Egyptian, Japanese, Maori, and Finnish mythology and folklore, or if i should change it to a new "all-Roman" naming scheme where the Roman equivalent to all Greek names (for example, Phobos and Deimos become Timor and Formido, and Uranus becomes Caelus) and as many others as possible, which is what i'm leaning more and more towards. if y'all want, i can post what i had previously with the more varied names

Good point. I think you really wind up with a situation where the dominant culture's names "stick" and then you build on that. Multiple cultures had names for the first several planets anciently. We wound up inherently Roman ones because they gained both political and scientific preeminence (in that they controlled the broadest flow of 'scientific' data that numerous countries built upon.

So, to change things to they're NOT Roman, you need PODs where either:
1) Roman never becomes quite so dominant and people pull from other sources

2) There is a strong, consistent, heavily documented, and widely disseminated body of scientific knowledge (Babylonian, Egyptian, etc) before Rome gains preeminence in Italy.

That being said, the Roman oriented model isn't bad except that proper relationships weren't always known when things were named so it's not 100% consistent.

Alon said:

Bear in mind that the names of the planets up to Saturn go back to antiquity - if your POD is before these Roman names existed, there may not even be a Roman culture in the first place.

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the names assigned in Antiquity--Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn--are unchanged since the POD is after these names come into definitive common use. i'm asking about the ones discovered AFTER that, primarily from 1610 onwards

oshron said:

the names assigned in Antiquity--Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn--are unchanged since the POD is after these names come into definitive common use. i'm asking about the ones discovered AFTER that, primarily from 1610 onwards

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Ah ok, in which case you need a less dominant European Renaissance and to stop the education systems of the world being quite so intensely interested in dissecting Roman culture and poring over its old works.

In effect you need some reason for a culture to supplant that, say Russian, Mongolian, Chinese, ancient Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, whatever.

Might help if you went in to more detail about what the point of departure is

oshron said:

the names assigned in Antiquity--Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn--are unchanged since the POD is after these names come into definitive common use. i'm asking about the ones discovered AFTER that, primarily from 1610 onwards

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You could start with the Galileian moons of Jupiter. Galilei himself named them after the Medici brothers, Cosimo, Francesco, Carlo, and Lorenzo. (Or, if Latinization wins out, Cosmas, Franciscus, Carolus and Laurentius).
If this sticks, then there is a strong precedent for the discoverer naming a new celestial body after a ducal or royal sponsor. Herschel is able to make Georgius for Uranus stick.
Whoever does the math to precisely predict Neptune due to analyzing Georgius' orbital irregularities will pick a name. It might become Victoria or even Albertus, Napoleon, Ludovicus, or Philippus, Fredericus, or Ferdinandus.

i hadn't really decided on a definitive POD for the planets being named differently after Antiquity, but since everyone seems to be in agreement that Roman names are more plausible, i'll rewrite the planet names so that it uses those ones instead



for posterity, i think i'll share what i had written before with the more diverse naming scheme:

• Phobos and Deimos were Pollux and Castor, respectively, after the Greco-Roman mythical twins
• Ceres was renamed Demeter (i had decided that 19th century planets would have Greek names)
• Europa was called Brunhilda (i'd had the thought that any planets, etc., not discovered by Italians in the 17th century would be named after something from the folklore of the discoverer's country, so this one is named after a Valkyrie since Simon Marius was German)
• Titan was renamed Antigonus after a Dutch folkloric giant (since Huygens was Dutch)
• Enceladus was renamed Ymir after the Norse primordial giant (i'd decided that 18th century discoveries would get Norse names)
• Mimas was renamed Goliath (an exception to the Norse naming rule of that century)
• Uranus was renamed Tyr after the one-handed Norse god (not only for the theme but also to eliminate that stupid fucking joke ITTL); each of Uranus' moons were named after characters (and one artifact) from the Nibelungenlied--Oberon, Titania, Ariel, Umbriel, and Miranda were named Siegfried, Kreimhild, Fafnir, Reginn, and Gram respectively (though like i said i'm still inclined to keep these ones)
• Neptune, as a 19th century discovery, was renamed Poseidon; its moons Triton, Nereid, and Proteus were renamed Polyphemus, Scylla, and Charybdis
• Pluto was renamed Osiris--i'd decided that 20th century planets would get Egyptian names, but since Pluto was the only one...
• Haumea, Makemake, Eris, and Sedna were renamed Kichijoten (Japanese), Ranginui (Maori), Whiro (Maori), and Vedenemo (Finnish); i'd decided that 21st century discoveries would be named differently based on what year they were discovered in
• finally, as the most recent change to the setup, i decided that the final name of the newly-discovered ninth planet would be Tezcatlipoca (TTL's present-day is in 2032, so there's plenty of time for more about it to be discovered)

i'll come back when i've finished devising the new "all-Roman" names and share them

i've made some more definitive progress on devising new planet names but i'd like some peer review. to explain, here's the basic criteria i decided on:

keeping with the consistent Roman mentality ITTL, all of the planets and satellites in the Solar System use Roman names, though some variety is given based on when they were discovered—all of the non-dwarf planets (and Pluto) use Roman names, which are extended to satellites of those planets discovered in the same decade [irrelevance snip]; subsequent discoveries are named differently based on decade, primarily after other cultures within Ancient Rome; other than this, names are chosen based on having some similarity to either the OTL planets or based on hypothetical bodies in the Solar System, [irrelevance snip]

i left out a couple lines since the statement of those might derail the thread

anyway, i figured out exactly which cultures of Rome to use for naming inspiration and ended up dividing them based on spans of 50 years (partly because, divided like that, it matches the number of cultures). i decided on Carthaginian, Phrygian (probably represented by the Hittites as a whole if it needs to be, but i'll go for stuff actually associated with Phyrgia first and foremost), Gaulish Celtic, Iberian, Italian (probably via Etruscans, but i'll save assigning this one for last), Greek (the original ones, saved for second-to-last so that i can get some variety), and pre-Islamic Arabian

that last one is what i'd like some peer review on. the namesake is already chosen--the chief goddess of the Classical Syrians, Atargatis--but since that namesake has a few different names, i'd like some extra opinions on which i should use. Atargatis is the fall-back, but other names of that deity include Atarratheh (more correctly, Atar'atheh, but the former would probably be used--both of these i guess you could call the "original" names), Derceto (the Greek name, used by Ctesias), and Dea Syriae, her Latin name. going on the "Roman mentality" i've decided on, then logically the name used SHOULD be Dea Syriae since that's what the Romans called Atargatis, but i don't like the sound of it as a planet name (it literally just means "Syrian goddess", a descriptor rather than a proper name).



TL;DR: what should TTL's version of the Neptunian moon Proteus be called? options are Atargatis, Ataratheh, Derceto, and Dea Syriae

considerable update: i've gotten almost all of the planets and satellites named now. i ended up deciding on naming schemes for all but two eras, the earliest and the latest. i'm starting to think i'll jus give Roman names to the Galilean moons 1) because it'll be simpler that way and 2) it makes more sense, and then give Iberian names to the 21st century discoveries, but i have yet to determine any of those



here's the full list of planets so far (obviously, it's not every single object in the solar system, but that would be overkill even for me):

• Mercury (discovered in Antiquity) : unchanged
• Venus (discovered in Antiquity) : unchanged
• Earth (discovered in Antiquity) : unchanged
• Moon (discovered in Antiquity) : unchanged
• Mars (discovered in Antiquity) : unchanged
• Deimos (discovered by Hall in 1877) : named Pollux after the Greek mythological twin
• Phobos (discovered by Hall in 1877) : named Castor after the Greek mythological twin
• Ceres* (discovered by Piazzi in 1801) : named Tantalus after the mythical Phrygian king (mainly because Demeter plays a more notable role in his associated legend)
• Jupiter (discovered in Antiquity) : unchanged
• Io (discovered by Galilei in 1610) : name undetermined
• Europa (discovered by Galilei and Marius in 1610) : name undetermined
• Ganymede (discovered by Galilei in 1610) : name undetermined
• Callisto (discovered by Galilei in 1610) : name undetermined
• Saturn (discovered in Antiquity) : unchanged
• Mimas (discovered by Herschel in 1789) : named Maponos after the Celtic youth god (Maponos could be considered the Mimas to Dea Matrona’s Gaia)
• Enceladus (discovered by Herschel in 1789) : named Fomorian after the Celtic mythical race (partly to parallel Titan as a moon named for a mythical race rather than a character)
• Tethys (discovered by Cassini in 1684) : named Thethis after the Etruscan equivalent of Achilles’ mother (Tethys and Thetis are sometimes confused, so the Etruscan form of Thetis is used here)
• Dione (discovered by Cassini in 1684) : named Letun after the Etruscan mother of the god twins (Leto and Dione were both Titaness consorts of Zeus)
• Rhea (discovered by Cassini in 1671) : named Ilithiia after the Etruscan childbirth goddess
• Titan (discovered by Huygens in 1655) : named Celsclan after the Etruscan giants
• Hyperion (discovered by Bond, Bond, and Lassell in 1848) : named Midas after the mythical Phrygian king
• Iapetus (discovered by Cassini in 1671) : named Sethlans after the Etruscan craftsman god (actually equivalent to Hephaestus, but Iapetus was apparently a crafting god, too)
• Phoebe (discovered by Pickering in 1898-1899) : named Hecate after the Greek magic goddess
• Uranus (discovered by Herschel in 1781) : named Caelus after the Roman primordial sky god (also to eliminate that goddamn joke)
• Miranda (discovered by Kuiper in 1948) : named Gram after Siegfried’s sword in the Nibelungenlied
• Ariel (discovered by Lassell in 1851) : named Fafnir after the dragon in the Nibelungenlied
• Umbriel (discovered by Lassell in 1851) : named Reginn after the dwarf in the Nibelungenlied
• Titania (discovered by Herschel in 1787) : named Kreimhild after Siegfried’s wife in the Nibelungenlied
• Oberon (discovered by Herschel in 1787) : named Siegfried after the hero of the Nibelungenlied
• Neptune (discovered by Le Verrier and Galle in 1846) : unchanged
• Proteus (discovered by Synnott in 1989) : named Atargatis after the Syrian protection goddess (the actual form of the name is still up in the air)
• Triton (discovered by Lassell in 1846) : named Gordias after the maker of the Gordian Knot
• Nereid (discovered by Kuiper in 1949) : named Dido after the founder-queen of Carthage
• Pluto* (discovered by Tombaugh in 1930) : named Orcus after the Roman underworld god (I learned in my research for this that Pluto ISN’T actually the Roman )
• Haumea* (discovered by Brown/Ortiz in 2004) : name undetermined
• Makemake* (discovered by Brown, Trujillo, and Rabinowitz in 2005) : name undetermined
• Eris* (discovered by Brown, Trujillo, and Rabinowitz in 2005) : name undetermined
• Planet Nine (discovered in 2016) : name undetermined