Breaking News - Xena officially 'Eris'

"Discord" and "Bad Name" ????

There has been a bit of "Discord" lately about what some considered a "Bad Name" for Pluto !

Is there a subliminal message being delivered in those new names ??

Or is the air freshener getting to me at last?

Peter.

Dysnomia ?

I always thought Dysnomia (Greek "bad name") was a disease affecting people's memory for the names of things or people.

Peter,

Not quite right.

In Greek, "nomos" means "law" ... dysnomia translates to someone who is against law and order. To use a very crude example, hooligans are the first example (for better or worse) that comes to mind as an example of "dysnomia".

Anthony.

Thanks Anthony......but I have to inform you that I am, in fact, right on both names.

Dysnomia is a medical condition of the brain/mind.
See:

www.online-medical-dictionary.org/Dysnomia.asp?q=Dysnomia

For Eris see:

www.pantheon.org/articles/e/eris.html

Peter,

I cannot argue one way or another about the medical reference BUT the goddess DYSNOMIA is named after lawlessness. I just did a quick check using Google and have confirmed it:

www.theoi.com/Daimon/Dysnomia.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysnomia_(moon)

msnbc.msn.com/id/14825585/

... and quite a few others.

Anthony.

I was reading a couple of issues of Sky and Telescope from 1994 the other night and in David Levy's column he was saying that they were going to give the name Eris to the first Trojan asteroid of Mars. They called it Eureka in the end because it was the first object of it's type in Mars' orbit.

Another issue from the same year has the Pluto-a-planet-or-not debate as well. Alan Stern (who I think is a principal investigator on the New Horizons mission to Pluto) put forward the guiding definition of what is a planet in the article. Number 2 is the hydrostatic equilibrium rule which was rolled out at the IAU conference recently BUT number 3 -- get this -- is that it should be a natural body; in other words, it rules out artificial satellites ... I guess they had been watching repeats of Star Wars and the Death Star just before coming up with that one :lol: :lol: :lol:

atb,

John

I think the origin is mythogical

Eris was the Greek goddess of Chaos and discord, while Dysomnia was her daughter.

What I think is strange is that it's a Greek name, while nearly everything else has been named for something out of Roman mythology.