As The Tenser points out, there’s some new planet-renamin’ afoot.
The dwarf planet formerly known as Xena (you’ll see why it’s bold in a second) is now known as Eris (the goddess of strife). Makes good sense for the dwarf planet that caused the whole pluto-naming ruckus, right?
XenaEris’s moon has been named Dysnomia (Eris’s daughter. Again, this makes sense on its face - name a planet after a goddess, and its moon after her daughter.
But I think (as does The Tensor), that this went the other way around - the name Eris was chosen simply to complement “Dysnomia”. How do I arrive at that conclusion? The Greek Dysnomia (δυσνομία) translates as “lawlessness”. As in Lucy Lawless(ness). As in Xena (told ya you’d see why I bolded it before).
You gotta love astronomers.
[Edit: I wrote this up before noticing it had been mentioned on Language Log and The NYT]
Posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 9:11 am. Categories: Linguistics, Interesting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can also leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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