The Baboon Congress

Naming Planets

80 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from tim.

I am feeling like the true corner on the trail is turned when we all have to go through space news heebie heebie a with the news of Pluto on the radio, on the network news and no one to tell us the baboon side of the equation

We baboons have our odd little niches. Goats, baboons, space, Ethel merman, state fair, books, gardening, cooking, haiku… Seemingly disconnected but a common uncommonality we share and are left flapping in the breeze while we go through our next phase.

I heard a person talking about how the mo on Pluto was poppycock today and that the dweebs who proclaimed it no longer a planet were the mall cops of the universe flexing their proclaimed expert status muscles to change the rules on what we can celebrate as an official planet.

It used to be Pluto was a newly found wonder and the dudes who ran the mega telescopes in the 1920’s welcomed as the unveiling of the new dawn of space brotherhood in the planetary oneness. Then it was proclaimed that with our new telescopes we could see more dwarf planets and the more and before you know it in addition to Pluto we could add Huey Dewey and Louie, sleepy dopey sneezy happy doc grumpy and bashful

Hey you’re the new planet in the universe! What are you going to do? I’m going to DIsneyworld !!!

What else do you think would be good planet naming criteria?

80 thoughts on “Naming Planets”

  1. I doubt that it qualifies as “good” criterion, but calling all newly discovered worlds “Trump” followed by consecutive numbers would fit the center-of-the-universe thinking of a certain Presidential wannabe.

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  4. I don’t really have a great idea for what we should be using for planetoid names, but I do tbink it would be nice if we could refrain from selling off the naming rights to the highest bidder.

    The absurdity of the Peach Bowl being renamed the Chik-Fil-A Bowl is bad enough. The idea that our neighbor to the East has floated the idea of selling off naming rights to their state parks makes me want to spit nails.

    I know space exploration is expensive and budgets are tight, but the idea that P&G could write a check and then name a swath of planetoids after their various product lines just goes right over the edge.

    It’s only a matter of time before some new element on the periodic table is discovered and named for the lab’s corporate sponsors. You heard it here first.

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    1. We think alike, mig. I hate the tendency to sell everything, including the names of things. As if people or corporations with too much money didn’t already have advantages that are unseemly. The Houston Astro team was happy to collect a great deal of money for naming rights to their new field, but about the time the field was to open as Enron Field the Enron name was devalued by one of the worst scandals in American business history. I hate the way universities and colleges name buildings for wealthy guys who have done nothing to earn the honor. The new Vikings stadium should be the Bud Grant field, not that this is a pressing issue.

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      2. I don’t know anything about Bud Grant but I do remember some very ugly public statements he made back in the ’80s with regard to Native American fishing rights. That alone would be enough for me to disqualify him.

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  5. Since the Earth is going to vaporize in about 500 million years, I think we should confine our naming of planets to those we believe can support life as we know it, so we can all move there someday in some super-mega-giga-tera0 spaceship.

    Better yet, build a gigantic rocket that can push Earth out of its orbit and shove it into the new galaxy the precise distance we need to be from the new sun in the solar system we will call home then. Might be a bumpy ride at first, and we might all have to wear spacesuits, live underground, and endure a bit of cold weather (but hey, us Minnesotans never met a winter we couldn’t handle, right?)

    So yeah, limit the planet naming. The other main reason to limit the naming is that we are running out of cool names for everything, and have you seen some of the baby names parents are coming up with these days?? Sheesh!

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. I read recently that the name Pluto was suggested by an eleven-year-old girl from England after the Roman God of the Underworld – the scientists in charge of naming decided it was the best idea. Go girls!

    Since we have one set of planets named for Roman gods, perhaps we should go with the Norse next – though not sure I’d want to live on planet Loki. It will be all fun and games until someone loses an eye (or their sanity). Hmm. Maybe not. Maybe authors is a better idea…(or at least a better idea until you have to live on Atwood where things are less than utopian and endings well, things just end).

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  7. I admit, I would like to live on Slartibartfass. All that fjiord-front property.

    Child-of-mine says the scientists have found so many asteroids they have just about run out of unique names and pretty much stick with numbers anymore.

    He also reminded me that even the theoretically possible elements have been named, so my prediction on that is probably pretty lame.

    It’s math camp week, he has no haiku in his soul.

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    1. If I could live on Slartibartfass, I would open a dive serving the perfect pangalactic gargleblaster, a sublime cafe au lait and old school thin waffles (not Belgian) with lots of ligonberries. No Vogon poetry slams allowed.

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  8. I have a hard enough naming my animals, I don’t even want to think of the world shaking listing of forever names for planets. Oh, wait…how about names from Shakespeare? Women’s names.

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    1. We do in fact have a large orange tabby-boy who glories in the name “Kitten”.

      Let the record show that I am the one who named Princess Beatrice.

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    2. My mother had a woman’s name from Shakespeare–Charmion (Cleopatra’s maid)–and you wouldn’t believe how much grief that was. Almost nobody could spell it, and those who could spell it couldn’t pronounce it. Try going through life with a name people can’t say or spell!

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        1. It is pronounced SHARM-ee-un. After people butchered the pronunciation for decades, my mom began telling everyone her name was “Sharm.” She began signing all documents with that name. Some friends never knew her real name. I thought that was a cool way of handling things, but I later found out that my mom resented it. It bothered her to use a false name just because other people couldn’t deal with her proper name.

          The name was chosen by my grandmother. My grandfather wasn’t given a vote. In some matters, my grandmother could be controlling. She was one of the most unique characters I’ve known, and she marched to her own drumbeat. My grandmother just liked the sound of Charmion. I don’t think she knew Charmion was a figure in Shakespeare.

          The one time I asked her about this, she said, “The name I really wanted to give my daughter was Iowa. Iowa. I think that’s the most beautiful name I ever heard.”

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  9. All my cats are and have been named “Cat.” I once read a Viet Names folk tale that said it was the perfect name. But then my mind wanders to T.S.Eliot and Weber’s “Cats” and consider those names as excellent choices. Even for planets.

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  11. This is too cosmic for my little brain. I’ve always been curious about the numbers they assign to stars and planets. In a way, it makes them more mysterious.

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  12. I’ve mentioned before that naming animals gets troublesome when you have too many of them. My best buddy used to own about 80 sled dogs. He would have to come up with names four or five litters each year, with a litter being five to eight puppies. Naming the pups was fun for a few years and then it became a headache. He solved it by assigning themes to each new litter: country music singers, world leaders, cartoon characters. The country music theme gave him such dogs as Waylon, Willie and Dolly. My friend did get tired of explaining why he had a dog in his team called Gorbachev.

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      1. That reminds me of the time I was driving behind a tank truck for some company that specialized in lubrication products. The truck had some lame motto like “We make things go more smoothly”. It would have been so much better if their motto had been “Resistance is Futile”.

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        1. A woman I knew many years ago was a CPA trying to start an independent business. I suggested the name could be “Many Happy Returns”. That would be a lie, of course.

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        2. Oh, I don’t know about that. Many returns are happy. I’ve done numerous returns for families with children that make them eligible for Earned Income Credit. In some cases they’ve delayed filing for several years, then find out they’re getting many thousands of dollars in refunds.

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    3. I have friends with goats with the same problem. Most do come up with themes. My recent “rent-a-goat” is named Beretta of the “gun” line. Personally I preferred the tree theme.

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      1. I suppose trees are less threatening than gun names. There are some good gun names: Ruger, Browning, Colt. But you will occasionally need to yell these names, like if the dog won’t come, and I would feel odd yelling “Uzi! Uzi!” Doesn’t sound right. I’d rather yell, “Aspen!”

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    4. I once heard about someone who got a Maine Coon cat from a litter named for characters from the Addams Family. The biggest cat in the litter was named Lurch.

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      2. Do any of you remember a friend of mine who used to post here who called herself Minnesota Firefly? She’s out on the West Coast and was recently attacked by a Maine coon cat. She was injured very severely by this cat and has had two surgeries to repair the damage. đŸ˜¦

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        1. I dunno, I can definitely see myself at the back door calling Xeeeeeenonnnnnn! But maybe not Ununoctium (tempoary name of element 118).

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  13. Good morning. For a new planet you need a name that is distinctive, not too long, and that has a good ring to it. Also, you need to be good at picking names that have a good sound. I wouldn’t be the best person to do this. I don’t pronounce some words correctly because my ear is not well tuned for hearing the sound of words. A name derived from the names of flowers might work. Maybe Rosa. Dahlia, or Zinnia. Not good? As I said, I am not great at dealing with the way words sound.

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  16. We are having quite a tempest in a teapot here over the naming of the sports teams at the University of North Dakota. The NCAA ruled that the Fighting Sioux name had to be changed. I liked the UNDies, but that suggestions was quickly eliminated. I believe they have narrowed it down to 5 possibilites that will be put to a public vote.

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        1. I do, too. But then I am from the western part of the state where Teddy R is a bigger deal than he is in the east.

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  17. Teams, especially small town teams, are often named by sucking up to the biggest local industry. You can guess how I feel about that. I used to hang out around the little town of Chinook, Montana. The local industry of note was a sugar beet cannery, so the football and basketball teams were the Beeters. Imagine, if you can, what kind of mascot that name yields. It was a thing that looked like a fat carrot, only the lower half was an egg beater. I’m not making this up. This beet guy had an insane expression on his face. His hands were churning the handles of the egg beater, causing them to spin like a tornado. I have a copy of this. Another complication arose when they added a girls’ basketball team. What to call them? The name Lady Beeters just didn’t sound right.

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  19. I just read that scientists have discovered a planet much like Earth. They gave it the beguiling name of Keppler52-b. It resembles Earth in many respects except objects on it would weigh about twice what they do on Earth. Just what I need.

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  20. We just got back from the Wildlife Sanctuary..over 200 animals and every single one has a name. And all the volunteers seem to know them all.

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  22. Character names are always good for planets. I’d go with names from the Tolkien books. There are many names, so you wouldn’t run out for quite a while. And who wouldn’t want to go live on Planet Frodo? Or at least visit there?

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  23. i realized yesterday when i saw anna at an event that i had not gotten a chance to visit the blog at all on thursday. a rarity. today i look and see i am the guest blogger. i see now why dale says its ok to be an enigma. you guys do just fine with no input at all. well done baboons.

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