Mid-August Star Musings

I’m a sucker for cool names of astronomy objects. The monickers for stars have come down to us through the ages or from data catalogs that list distant and dimmer stars. On any given night you can look up at the sky and see a bright star with a name like Gomeisa or a dimmer one that may simply have a few letters and a number that denote its name — like HIP80001.  Open up just about any stargazing book and you’ll find lists of the brighter stars, and all of them have “word” names like Alnath or some such. There are also more than a few web sites with those lists, like Skyeye (which not only gives you the  name of the star, but a star chart showing how to find it).

So, I was idly scrolling through the list at SkyEye and got to thinking that these make some dandy first names for characters in science fiction (or even a newborn baby, if you’re daring enough). For writers, it’s kind of fun to make a game of it. For example, say you are REALLY stuck for a name for the hero of your new science fiction adventure. Simply go to the list and for the first name of the person, pick one star name.  You need a last name, so select the name of something like your favorite sports team*, or your favorite make of automobile and append the term “-walker” or “-fighter” or “-gazer” to the end of it.  Thus, you get names like Baiten Kaitos Bronco-walker or Nunki Pirate-fighter or Regulus Eclipse-gazer.

Now, for babies, you probably need to be a little more circumspect (not the least because you DO have to explain this one to your in-laws at some point).  So, I wouldn’t suggest saddling your kid with Rukbat or Scheat or Sualocin (which kind of sounds like the name of a new drug for for skin rashes).  But, Maia is rather nice, as is Vega or Shaula or Mira, or Caroli.

If you do that for your kid, then you’ll (of course) have to take them out when they get big enough so you can show them the star they’re named after.  It’s far better (and much more sensible, not to mention cost-effective) than paying to name a star and then finding out that the name you paid for isn’t official…

(*This probably won’t work too well with Manchester United, although Arsenal could squeak through… just sayin’… )