Breaking News - Xena officially 'Eris'

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.

Well UB313 was certainly the catalyst for some serious discord in the Astronomical community! I have to say the name is really starting to grow on me. These guys had a sense of humour!

Bart.

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.

Not quite ...

(1) Roman mythology is a DIRECT copy of Greek mythology (Hermes -> Mercury, Aphrodite -> Venus, Ares -> Mars, Zeus/Dias -> Jupiter etc etc). In other words, Greek mythology is the source whereas Roman "mythology" not only never existed originally but what exists right now is a direct copy of the earlier Greek mythology.

(2) There are many examples of Greek mythology applied to the solar system ... the moons of Mars are named Deimos and Phobos, the Jovian satellites also have many Greek mythological names (ex. Io, Callypso, Gannymede etc), the Milky Way/Galaxy refers to the milk ("gala") spilled by the goddess Hera across the sky while breast-feeding Hercules etc etc.

Anthony.

The Romans called ERIS DISCORDIA. ......"discord" in English.
The Latin (not Greek..my mistake Anthony) word Dysnomia directly translates into English :"bad name".

I think the people who picked those names were making a point about a recent discord about names.

Only they can answer that.

It wouldn't be the first time that has happened in Astronomy!

Peter

The Romans called ERIS DISCORDIA. ......"discord" in English.
The Latin (not Greek..my mistake Anthony) word Dysnomia directly translates into English :"bad name".

Peter,

One of the reasons Greek is considered a very rich language has to do with the fact that basic words are used as building blocks for larger and more complex words. DYSNOMIA is one such trivial example where DYS and NOMIA are used to produce DYSNOMIA and, in a similar fashion, EY and NOMIA are used to construct EYNOMIA (of course, DYSNOMIA and EYNOMIA are opposites of each other since DYS has a negative connotation and EY (ex. EUphoric) has a positive connotation).

The fact that DYS is used in DYSNOMIA makes me very highly suspicious that the existing word in English has a Greek basis as opposed to Latin since DYS (and EY) are very common tokens in Greek which have also being ported (in part) in English (ex. functional-DYSfunctional).

Of course, we have "poor" translations from Greek into Latin (ex. the planet OYRANOS in Greek is Uranus in Latin) and DYSNOMIA may be another example. However, I am 99.999% sure the intended source and origin is Greek and is based on the goddess for lawlessness (DYS + nomos).

Anthony.

PS. In Greek, we have male, female and neuter genders associated with words. To this end, since we are talking about a female goddess, we have dysnomIA ... if it were a male god, it would have been dysnomOS ... which gets back to my original comment that DYSNOMIA is based on the two base words DYS and NOMOS and whose "female application" is DYSNOMIA.

PPS. I am beating this thing to death ... further to the comment that DYSNOMIA is supposedly Latin and translates to "bad name" in English, I should point out that "name" in Greek is "onoma" and, if we drop the "o", I suppose we can get something virtual identical to DYSNOMIA.

The word "name" in Latin is "appellum" and, as such, I am convinced the English translation "bad name" is not based on the Latin (appellum) but on the Greek (dys + onoma).