Every star has a name

Where the names come from

Many of the names we use are Arabic. The medieval astronomers who wrote in Arabic preserved and extended the knowledge of the Greeks, and their names later passed into Latin and into our languages. Aldebaran means “the follower”, because it rises behind the Pleiades. Altair comes from “the flying eagle”. Today it is the International Astronomical Union that sets the official names.

To name is to single out

With the naked eye you can see a few thousand stars, and only a few hundred have a name of their own. The rest carry a letter or a catalogue number. Giving one a name takes it out of the crowd: it says that this one, and no other, matters.

What a psalm says

There is a psalm in the Bible, number 147, that says of God that he counts the number of the stars and calls each one by its name. Whoever wrote it was looking at the same sky as we are and could not count them. The image he chose to speak of care is this: someone for whom none of them is just one more.

Naming someone who has gone

Something similar happens with the people we have lost. Saying their name aloud, telling who they were, is a way of keeping them from being lost among everyone else. Psychologists who study grief call this continuing the bond, and have found that it is not staying behind: it is another way of going on loving.

• Say their name when you talk about them.
• Tell something about them to someone who never knew them.
• Keep a date to remember them.
• Write what you would say to them.

The stars that are sold

There are companies that sell “naming a star after you”. It is worth knowing: those names have no official standing and no astronomer recognises them. You don’t need to buy anything to look at a star and remember someone.

In this sky

In A shared universe you can light a star “For someone who is gone”. It does not carry their name, because here nobody says who they are. But you know who it shines for.