The International Astronomical Union has named 17 minor planets as part of its NameExoWorlds contest. Looking at the winning monikers—which include such dreadful titles as “Miguelhernández” and “Thunder Bay”—it’s now painfully clear that the system of naming celestial objects is broken.
Back in 2015, the IAU organized the NameExoWorlds contest, allowing the public to submit names for 32 extrasolar planets orbiting 15 stars. It could’ve been a disaster (“Rock’n’Roll Star” or “Starry Bunnies” were two of the initial submissions), but many of the approved names were actually quite beautiful, from Veritate, Hypatia, and Orbitar to Dagon, Poltergeist, and Dulcinea.
As a reward, the winners of this contest, which seem to be disproportionately represented by universities and observatories, were given the opportunity to name 17 minor planets in our solar system (a minor planet being a celestial body in orbit around the Sun that’s too small to be considered a planet, but too big to be considered an asteroid or comet). The IAU, with the assistance of its Division F Working Group Small Bodies Nomenclature (a shitty name for a group that’s supposed to be in the business of recognizing, you know, actually pleasant-sounding or profound names) approved the names of these minor planets after the winners made their proposals.
The new monikers—named for astronomers, educators, authors, poets, theatrical dances, and locations of astronomical organizations—were (supposedly) chosen by the same organizations who chose the winning exoplanet names, but they lack the imagination and majesty of the earlier selections.
Some aren’t bad, like Mehdia, Kodai, and Tantawi, but most are complete garbage. The worst include “Royaldutchastro” (named by the Royal Netherlands Association for Meteorology and Astronomy), “Miguelhernández” (named by the Student Society at Complutense University of Madrid), and the godawful “Thunder Bay” (named by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada from—you guessed it—Thunder Bay). Other awful names include “Brevardastro,” “Jubelmatt,” and “Javiergorosabel.”
Here’s the full list of the approved names, along with their previous minor planet designations:
Brevardastro (6117) 1985 CZ1
Mayuboshi (6118) 1986 QX3
Singto (6125) 1989 CN
Hubelmatt (6126) 1989 EW1
Royaldutchastro (6133) 1990 RC3
Kamagari (6134) 1990 RA5
Miguelhernández (6138) 1991 JH1
Tantawi (6142) 1993 EP
Andréseloy (6159) 1991 YH
Fécamp (6177): 1986 CE2
Kagura (6187) 1988 RD5
Javiergorosabel (6192) 1990 KB1
Bernardbowen (6196) 1991 UO4
Franzthaler (6212) 1993 MS1
Mehdia (6215) 1973 EK
Kodai (6217) 1975 XH
Thunder Bay (11780) 1942 TB
It’s one thing to reward contest winners by allowing them to propose new names, but not at the expense of good taste. The IAU should be embarrassed by these selections and reconsider similar honors in the future. Thanks to this judgement lapse, as of today our solar system sounds a little bit more like a basket of reject planets from a c-list scifi movie.
