Traditional Star Names

 
Star proper names, along with many constellation figures, are the oldest feature of visual astronomy.

Star names are not used in the foundational astronomical reference, The Mathematical Composition by the Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, writing in Greek ca. 150 CE — a book better known, in the Latin translation made in 1175 of the Arabic translation made ca. 850 CE, as the Almagest. Instead, Ptolemy used the figure naming or asterism naming strategy to identify approximately 1020 stars.

Thus, for stars in "The Hunter" (Orion), Ptolemy lists: the bright red star in the right shoulder, the star in the left shoulder, the star in the right elbow, the star in the handle of the dagger, and so on. This traditional (ancient) catalog convention persisted in Europe as late as 1783, when William Herschel used it to identify stars in his first two double star catalogs.

Prior to the 19th century, the use of celestial coordinates and mensurated star atlases to identify stars was not a standard astronomical convention. Star atlases from medieval times through the 18th century were fancifully decorative, with stars approximately located within fancifully drawn constellation figures. Baroque era atlases, starting with Johannes Bayer's Uranometria (1603), plotted stars using astrometric tables developed by Tycho Brahe, and Bayer innovated the system of labeling the brightest stars within a constellation with Greek letters. Later, John Flamsteed applied the modern equatorial coordinate system to about 4,000 naked eye stars and numbered them in right ascension order within a constellation; his work was published posthumously in 1725. But telescopes of the era were either fixed transit instruments or fitted with altazimuth mountings, so setting circles could not be used. It was not until the early 19th century that "figure naming" of stars was superseded by the routine use of celestial coordinates and the Bayer/Flamsteed system of labeling.

Separate from this figure naming tradition is a parallel literature of medieval and renaissance star name lists associated with philology, cartography and the explanation of scientific instruments.

The principal source for this star name literature is The Book of Constellations of the Fixed Stars by the Persian astronomer Omar al-Sufi (c.960 CE), who attempted to align traditional Arabic star names with the constellations defined by Ptolemy. The earlier, possibly oral cultural traditions that were the source for the al-Sufi names are now lost.

The transmission of Arabic star names to European astronomers occurred in several waves and at the hands of many different authors. The list includes: a Latin translation of Arabic copies of the Almagest (the original Greek editions had been lost) by Gerard of Cremona in 1175; a few 12th century instruction manuals for the construction and use of astrolabes; an astronomy textbook compiled c.1256 at the order of King Alphonso X of Spain; the star catalog of Ulugh Beg (Muhammad Taragay) published in 1437; a careful conflation of these sources in the Uranometria star atlas of Johann Bayer (1603); further contributions added during the Baroque era by Jakob von Christmann, Wilhelm Schickard and Philipp von Zesen; and in particular in the Latin translation of Ulugh Beg's catalog by Thomas Hyde (1665, reprinted many times).

But the culminating endowment of nearly two thirds of the existing star names was made in the early 19th century by the Italian astronomer Niccolò Cacciatore, when he supervised the second edition of the Palermo Star Catalogue (1814). Here many of the ersatz Arabic names make their first appearance, along with the star names Sualocin and Rotanev, reverse spellings of Cacciatore's own name in Latin. A few other of Cacciatore's star names, such as Asmidiske, Zavijava and Iclarkrau, appear to be anagram or phonetic puzzles.

Unfortunately, this mingling of different star naming traditions from different sources led to a jumble of names within a single constellation. Thus Draco (the Dragon) contains Rastaban "head of the serpent", Edasich "the hyena", Arrakis "dancer", Alsafi "cooking tripod" and Dziban "the two jackals". A minority of star names derive from visual attributes of the star or its astronomical or navigational significance, other Middle Eastern or Asian languages, or (in modern times) from whimsy (Dnoces, Regor, etc.). The confluence of different naming traditions and transliteration variants has also produced several names for many individual stars. Thus, Almach is variously given as Almaach, Almaack, Almak, Almaak, Alamak; Almaaz is alternately Al Anz; Zuben-el-Akrab is sometimes Zubenalakrab, and so on.

During the process of transmission and translation, the original Arabic names were so promiscuously transliterated, Latinized, abbreviated and misspelled (especially by Cacciatore) that modern names are only remotely or unrecognizably related to their origins. Since then, authors with dubious credentials, such as Ludwig Ideler and Richard Hinckley Allen, further contributed to the confusion. The result, as Paul Kunitzsch puts it, is "a conglomeration of heterogeneous words fashioned at different times and in different ways," not excluding whimsy and fabrication.

This page simply collates the common name of 329 stars with the Bayer/Flamsteed designation, in two tables alphabetized by star name and by Bayer/Flamsteed label within constellation. For stars with more than one common name or spelling, I have "crowd sourced" by means of Google citation counts to determine which of the spelling variants is preferred; the most frequent alternative is listed in parentheses. Stars brighter than visual magnitude 3.0 are in CAPS. Asterisked (*) stars are the 58 navigation stars from the USNO Nautical Almanac, and conform to the choice and spelling of star names used there.

I believe this is one of the more complete and accurate star name lists available online. Comments or corrections are welcomed.

Further Reading

Arabic in the Sky - a splendidly lucid and detailed overview by Robert Liebling
Star Names - A short reliable list by Ian Ridpath.
Star Names - A longer somewhat idiosyncratic list by Steven Gibson.
Star Names v1.1.2 (2006-05-28) - A short list of star name etymologies or meanings by Brian Tung.

I. Star names

II. Constellation Named Stars

Last revised 11/26/13 • ©2013 Bruce MacEvoy