A Dictionary of Modern Star Names is a fun little book tracing the derivation of star names. The authors are Arabic scholar Paul Kunitzsch and astronomy teacher Tim Smart; the author notes proclaim that Mr. Smart has named his children Andromeda and Rigel, which shows considerable dedication and perhaps a perverse sense of humor (I supposed he could have named them Zubenelgenubi and Betelguese, so they should be thankful for small mercies).


There’s an extensive and scholarly introduction in which it’s noted that while most star names (around 70%) are Arabic, these really come from two different sources – names used by the original Arab nomads, abbreviated in the text as “ind-Arab”, and names translated to Arabic from Greek scientific works (primarily the Almagest), abbreviated as “sci-Arab”. There are names from other sources – modern coinages, original Greek and Latin, now and then Hebrew, Persian or other languages, and in a couple of cases no source anybody can trace.


A few random notes:

*Gomeisa, β Canis Minoris, comes from ind-Arab for “with a filthy fluid at the corner of the eye”. As near as the authors can tell this relates to pre-Islamic Arabic legend about sisters separated from their brother by the Milky Way and weeping over their misfortune. Good name for a child.

*Albireo, β Cygnii: The result of sort of a Renaissance game of “Telephone”. The original Greek name for the constellation Cygnus was simple enough – “Ορνις”, meaning “Bird”. This got transliterated to sci-Arab as “ūrnis” – an attempt to duplicate the sound without conveying the meaning. Medieval Latin translators didn’t recognize this as a Greek word so just transliterated it again as “eurisim” or “eirisun” or “eirisim”, none of which meant anything in Latin. Somewhere along the line a translator tried to force a meaning on it, deciding it should be “ireus” which was apparently some kind of medicinal herb, and so commented in his manuscript of the Almagest as “eirisim … ab ireo” meaning [the constellation name] “eirisim” coming from [the plant] ireo [the ablative case of “ireus”]. Written under the constellation figure for Cygnus, some later translator transferred “ab ireo” to the star, and then it got reverse Arabicized to “Albireo”.

*Girtab, θ Scorpii: Probably the oldest name for any star, this comes from the Sumerian GIR.TAB “Scorpion”, one of the many cases where a name for the whole constellation was applied to an individual star.

*Regor, γ Velorum: The Apollo astronauts were apparently unable to remember Bayer names for navigational stars, so they supplied their own for those that didn’t already have one; “Regor” is “Roger” backwards, and was named for Roger Chaffee. Some sources claim that it was a posthumous honor, but the name was in use before the Apollo I fire.

*Bečvář stars: Czech astronomer Antonín Bečvář supervised the publication of the Skalnate Pleso Atlas of the Heavens and the accompanying Atlas Catalog in 1951; this was the first challenge to the venerable Norton’s Star Atlas and quickly became the amateur astronomer’s choice. The Catalog, in addition to position, proper motion, spectral type, and other astronomical information, included a column for popular names. Twelve of the names used have no known source; author Kunitzsch has been unable to trace them, even after consultation with Bečvář’s colleagues. Two other unusual names used by Bečvář have hypothetical Arabic sources but are not known elsewhere in the forms Bečvář used. This may be another case of translation and transliteration among multiple language; with Czech as an intermediate.


Some 254 star names are covered and just browsing is enjoyable. The only improvement I might suggest would be inclusion of some star maps showing ind-Arab “lunar mansions” (the approximate equivalent of Zodiac constellations); this might help showing how names of the “mansions” were sometimes applied to individual stars. ( )

A reference work but short enough that I read it from cover to cover. The authors stick strictly to the philological side, eschewing all discussion of any astronomy except the positional.

I was aware, as I imagine most people with any interest in astronomy are, that most of our star names are of Arabic origin (with most of the rest from Greek or Latin). Something I hadn't appreciated is that an awful lot of those Arabic-derived names are now applied to different stars than those they signified to medieval Arab astronomers, and in many cases didn't originally refer to individual stars but to asterisms. The names themselves are usually distorted by translation and transmission, sometimes radically - "Betelgeuze" is from Yad-al-Jauza' (meaning something like "Hand of the Central One").

The 2006 reprint, in a charming oddity, includes the foreword from a predecessor, Richard H. Allen's 1899 Star Names. This work - which is much longer, more digressive, and, near as I can judge, less philologically reliable - is available for free online at Lacus Curtius.