People Love to Name Things: Current Trends in Naming Minor Planets

After several introductory remarks regarding the onomastic terminology used for names of celestial objects, the article proposes a semantic and a limited formal analysis of the minor planet names officially published in 2022 by the International Astronomical Union in its sixteen Working Group Small Bodies Nomenclature Bulletins. Besides the technical data on the newly discovered minor planets, these bulletins contain short motivations of minor planet names. The paper further describes the minor planet nomenclature and the rules governing their naming. This nomenclature has a clearly defined set of rules, and besides the names, there exist two other parallel ways to designate minor planets: provisional designation and number. Out of the total 648 minor planet names, an overwhelming majority (585 names, 90%) are based on anthroponyms, with three roughly identifiable subgroups of names commemorating (a) scientists, (b) “celebrities”, mostly artists and athletes, and (c) the discoverers’ relatives and friends. Within the first subgroup (scientists), the most important are the names honouring people involved in astronomical research. Only a minor part of the corpus is based on chrematonyms (32 names, 5%), mostly referring to educational institutions, scientific associations, names of observatories and other institutions, and toponyms (28 names, 4%), usually honouring settlements important for the discoverer or for the astronomy itself. Other types of motivations occur exceptionally, and in all such cases, minor planets names are based on common nouns.