I know this one.
There was a decent amount of debate over the name for Uranus. There was already a naming tradition present, and some argued it should be broken. I think one suggestion was like “George’s Star”, thank fuck that didn’t stick.
Eventually it was settled on being named after the Greek sky deity Ouranos, which is the father of Kronos (Saturn in Latin), who is the father of Zeus (Jupiter in Latin), who is the father of Ares (Mars), who is the spouse-brother of Aphrodite (Venus), and sibling to Hermes (Mercury).
Old astronomers had big old hardons for Greco-Roman mythology.
Naturally the father-of father-of scheme didn’t stick since Poseidon (Neptune) and Hades (Pluto) are brothers of Zeus.
Eris (Discordia) is named after the deity that sparked the Trojan war. She wasn’t invited to a wedding on account of being a party pooper, and in true party-pooper fashion she sowed discord by throwing in a golden apple “for the fairest”, which Aphrodite, Athena (Minerva), and Hera (Juno) promptly started fighting over.
It’s thus quite appropriate that the planet that caused much debate in the astronomical community, leading to a change in definition of what a planet is, and Pluto being classified a dwarf planet, is named after her.
It’ll have a new name in 2620
§polier
Fry: Oh, man, this is great! Hey, as long as you don’t make me smell Uranus.
[He laughs.]
Leela: I don’t get it.
Farnsworth: I’m sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all…
Fry: Oh. What’s it called now?
Farnsworth: Urectum.One of nature’s happy little coincidences.
Now I’m picturing Bob Ross painting Uranus.
Didn’t know Bob Ross did body painting. What episode is that?
It’s somewhere on Pornhub, probably
Astronomers had pretty much all agreed on the name “Uranus” by 1850, and the first spectrographic studies began in 1861—so yeah.
Yeah, probably
He who smelt it didn’t name it.
People always pronounce it wrong, it’s your-ah-nohse, sometimes your-ah-nuss. People always mispronounce Neanderthal as well. It’s ne-ander-tall.
I hear it pronounced Urine-us more than not lately. It’s not better.
I’m glad scientists are planning to change it to Urectum in the year 2620, finally put an end to this confusion. They should do it sooner if you ask me.
I think when they named Uranus, English wasn’t invented yet to have called the butthole an anus. 🤷♂️
They also probably didn’t know it was a planet.
