[meteorite-list] Origin of Pluto's name

[Bob King]

Hi Al and everyone,
The name Pluto was suggested by 11-year-old Venetia Burney of 
England who had been reading a popular-level book on mythology at 
the time. The article about Pluto's discovery appeared in the Times 
newspaper (March 14, 1930 edition) and her grandfather, who worked 
at Oxford, read the story aloud to her. Upon hearing it, she made the 
suggestion and her grandfather mentioned it to a former Astronomer 
Royal who passed it along to the Lowell astronomers.
. Pluto is named after the Roman god of the underworld. It is apparently 
just a coincidence that Disney's Pluto was created about the same time. 
Other names suggested for the planet were: Lowell, Atlas, Artemis, 
Perseus, Vulan, Tantalus, Idana, Cronus, Zymal and Minerva 
(suggested by the New York Times) but the young girl's was the one 
selected. The astronomers liked the underworld connection because of 
Pluto's distance in the deep dark cold of the outer solar system. It also 
was a nice coincidence that the first two letters of the name were 
Percival Lowell's initials.
To the best of my knowledge that is how Pluto was named.
Bob

> Hi Tom and all,
> 
> In Reality Pluto wasn't named after the cartoon character, rather it was 
> a name picked out by the discover (and staff at Lowell) and having 
> something to do with the afterlife. I'm not sure if the Dog Pluto was 
> well know or even around at that time in 1930. This is a misconception 
> by many.
> 
> --AL
> 
> 
> Tom Knudson wrote:
> 
> Hi list, I think they should name all those outer planet "want-to-be's"
> after carton characters, heck we already have Pluto, we can add Mickey 
> and Mini, Daffy, Donald, bugs, porky, Sylvester and tweety!  :  )
> Thanks, Tom
> 
> peregrineflier <><
> ______________________________________________
> Meteorite-list mailing list
> Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list