Star names & their origin - part one
March 20th, 2013 | by sbieger |This is going to be a reference post that can help you get started into a very deep subject. There are so many different paths one could take when exploring the history of star names and their respective constellations so I’ll try to just set you up and you can take it from here. This post covers what I call more “classical” star names since many of the names we use today come from this tradition. I’ll have more posts in the series in the coming months covering the less well known star names.
Even though there is a lot of literature covering what I would call the classic star name history (Greek and Arabic especially), one should also look to the Chinese and Indian cultures for some very early developments. You could also look to the Anglo Saxon times for connections to the sky from places like Stonehenge. Then, travel west across the Atlantic and examine the rich culture of the Meso Americans like the Maya. Finally, there are also a number of great star stories, myths and traditions throughout North America, such as the native pueblo Indians like the Hopi, and the Pawnee of the great plains. All of these cultures have contributed their own names for the star in our sky.
I have begun reading more about the Southwest American Indian cultures such as those that lived in the 7th through the thirteenth centuries. I hope to follow that thread more in the future in what I hope will be a section on American Archeoastronomy. I’ll have a future post on this coming soon. Here is a useful link on archeoastronomy if you’re interested in a primer on the subject.
The Wikipedia links below are a good starting point for researching star names from the Greek, Latin and Arabic traditions. And watch for the upcoming posts in this series.
Wikipedia: Star observation history
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