Arabic Star Names

Chair: Nancy K. Cox, San Francisco Amateur Astronomers

I’m sure many of you, as you engage in stargazing of the various constellations, while checking your starcharts, note the many foreign-sounding names given to individual stars. Our current star names found on star maps are a pot pourri deriving from many sources, including ancient Greek, Latin, Roman, Chinese, Mesopotamian ... and many many from Arabic. This discussion will focus on Arabic star names, still in use today, and many star names in Arabic that are familiar to us. The Arabic star names are too numerous to cover in one session. My chief reference “bible” for this session is Richard H. Allen’s well-known Star Names, Their Lore and Meaning (Dover 1963). His index of Arabic star names runs 11 pages, 2 columns per page! I thought it might be fun for each of us to bring up some of our favorites – stars such as Denebola, the lion’s tail, in Leo the lion. And who doesn’t like to rattle off the names of the 3 belt stars in Orion! One of my favorites is Shaula, in Scorpius – it is the end point of the scorpion’s tail, and the word does mean “the sting” (Al Shaulah).

As far as other references go, most comprehensive guides to the stars and constellations give the star’s Arabic name and its meaning. Maybe we will improve our vocabulary, and be surprised at how many Arabic words have crept into the English language – algebra, Alhambra, alcohol – “al-” obviously equivalent of “the”.

The history of star names as pertains to Arabic names is also interesting. Besides the many stars that were named by the Arabs, “many star names supposed to have originated in Arabia are merely that culture’s translations of the Greek descriptive terms, adapted during the rule of the Abbasids (the first organized government among the Arabs, that began in the year 749), from Claudius Ptolemy’s Almagest”. (from Allen, p vi.)

In addition to the 1200s, Golden Age of Islamic Science, the subject of a previous NCHALADA session, Arabic star names also came about because of their desert life with its clear skies, which made them very familiar with the stars. And for the Arabs, the stars also had a practical use: just as for sailors at sea, some Arabs needed the stars for guidance and navigation across the featureless seas of sand and rock called the desert.

Most Arabic star names applied to a single star; they did not name or see animals and people as constellations. They most often named the stars for their tents, household articles, boats, wells, ponds, rivers, fruits, grains, nuts, etc., all of which they imagined in the sky. A good example of this is one of those 3 belt stars of Orion: Mintaka, from Al Mintakah, which does mean “the belt”.