Limerick Astronomy Club: What’s in a planet's name?

From when we first enter primary school we get to learn the names of the planets and the order in which they come with many of us learning ways to remember their order (Many Very Eager Men Jog Straight Up Narrow Paths, was the way in which I learnt their order).

However have you considered where each planet got its name from? So let’s take them in order from the sun and see where all their names originated.

Thanks to Roman mythology, many of our planets are named after their gods and goddesses. Mercury, which zips around the Sun in just 88 earth days gets its name from ‘Mercurius’, in Roman religion, god of shopkeepers and merchants, travellers and transporters of goods, and thieves and tricksters. Venus, which was seen as the brightest planet in the night sky was named after the goddess of love and beauty. What about our home? Earth doesn’t derive its name from Roman mythology but rather from an Old English and Germanic word literally meaning “ground”. The next planet out often referred to as the ‘Red Planet’, got its name primarily due to its colour and so was named after Mars the god of war. The largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, was rightly named after the king of the Roman gods, the god of thunder, lightning, storms, light and sky. Following on is Saturn, the second largest of the planets was named after the god of agriculture. Uranus was discovered by famed Astronomer William Herschel in 1781, he originally wanted to call its “Georgium Sidus,” for the King of England George III. While many were not happy with this and it was a German astronomer Johann Bode who suggested the name Uranus, a Latinised version of the Greek god of the sky, Ouranos; however it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that the name took fully hold. Finally, the planet furthest from the sun, Neptune, wasn’t discovered until 1846 by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle. Again there was some controversy surrounding the naming of the planet with many believing that it should be named after French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier on who’s mathematical calculations the discovery of the planet was made. Finally, it was agreed that as Neptune is distinguished by its vivid blue colour, it should be named after the Roman god of the sea. The planet that was never a planet, Pluto, was only considered a full planet from 1930-2006 and derived its name from the god of the underworld.

Limerick Astronomy Club email: limerickastronomyclub @gmail.com