Ever looked up at a clear night sky and wondered why that one bright flickering dot is called "Sirius" while the massive swirl of light next to it is just "M101"? It feels inconsistent. Because it is. We’ve been naming things in space for thousands of years, and honestly, it’s a total mess of ancient mythology, colonial history, and modern computer-generated strings of gibberish.
The universe doesn't come with labels. Humans just really like to name stuff.
👉 See also: How Do I Turn iPhone X Off? The Simple Fix for the Button Confusion
When you dig into galaxy and star names, you realize we are currently living in a weird transition period. We are moving away from the romantic, hero-centric names of the Greeks and Arabs and toward a system that sounds more like a Wi-Fi password. It’s practical, sure, but it loses a bit of the soul. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed trying to navigate a star chart, don't feel bad. Even professional astronomers at places like the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have to use cross-reference databases just to keep track of which "Alpha" is which.
How We Ended Up With This Naming Chaos
Basically, the "official" names we use today are a giant layered cake of different eras. The bottom layer is the naked-eye stuff. These are the stars our ancestors could see without any fancy gear. Most of the famous ones—Betelgeuse, Rigel, Altair—have Arabic roots. Why? Because during the Dark Ages in Europe, Islamic scholars were the ones actually doing the math and keeping the records. They were the ones translating Ptolemy’s Almagest and adding their own observations.
Then came the telescopes. Suddenly, we could see millions of things we couldn't see before.
Johann Bayer tried to fix the confusion in 1603 by using Greek letters. He’d take a constellation, like Centaurus, and call the brightest star "Alpha Centauri." It was a great system until we realized some constellations have way more than 24 stars (the length of the Greek alphabet). Then came John Flamsteed, who just started using numbers. 34 Tauri, for example. It’s less poetic, but it scales better.
The Problem With Galaxies
Galaxies are a relatively new addition to the naming game. Until about 100 years ago, we didn't even know they were galaxies. We thought they were just "spiral nebulae" inside our own Milky Way. Edwin Hubble changed everything in the 1920s when he proved that Andromeda was actually a "city of stars" millions of light-years away.
Because we found them so late, almost no galaxies have "cool" names. Most are just entries in the Messier Catalog (M) or the New General Catalogue (NGC).
- The Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
- The Sombrero Galaxy (M104)
- The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51)
If a galaxy has a name that sounds like a real word, it’s usually because it looks like something specific. The "Cigar Galaxy" (M82) looks like... well, a cigar. But the vast majority of the trillions of galaxies out there are just coordinates. Imagine if your home address was just your exact latitude and longitude instead of "Maple Street." That’s the reality of modern astronomy.
Why Some Star Names Sound Like Errors
If you’ve ever looked at a star catalog and seen something like 2MASS J18082002-5104378, you might think someone’s cat walked across the keyboard. It’s actually a very specific code.
That "2MASS" part refers to the Two Micron All Sky Survey. The numbers that follow are the right ascension and declination—essentially the GPS coordinates for the sky. It’s incredibly boring. But it’s necessary. There are simply too many stars to give them all names like "Stella" or "Bob."
We are currently tracking over a billion stars thanks to the Gaia mission. If we tried to give them all traditional names, we'd run out of words in every language on Earth.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU)
There is a lot of misinformation online about "buying a star." You’ve probably seen the ads. "Name a star after your girlfriend for $50!"
Honestly? It's a scam.
The only organization with the actual authority to name celestial bodies is the IAU. And they don't sell names. They have very strict rules. For a star to get a "proper name," it usually has to have significant historical or scientific importance. In 2016, they actually formed the Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to go back and standardize the spelling of ancient names so we’d stop arguing over whether it's "Betelgeuse" or "Beetlejuice" (it's the former, though the pronunciation is still a debated mess).
The Cultural Weight of the Milky Way
We often forget that galaxy and star names aren't universal. What we call "The Big Dipper" is "The Plough" in the UK, "The Seven Sages" in India, and "The Great Bear" (Ursa Major) in the official Latin used by scientists.
This cultural friction matters because it reminds us that the sky is a mirror. When the Yolngu people in Australia look at Orion, they don't see a hunter. They see a canoe. When we standardize names, we sometimes accidentally erase those indigenous histories. Recent efforts by the IAU have tried to fix this by officially recognizing names like Wardaman star names alongside the traditional Western ones.
Is the "Milky Way" Actually a Name?
Technically, yes. But it’s also a description. Most languages have a version of it that translates to "The Silver River" or "The Path of Straw." It’s our home. It’s the only galaxy we name with such intimacy. Every other galaxy is an "object" we observe from the outside.
Practical Steps for Navigating the Night Sky
If you want to move beyond just looking at pretty lights and actually understand what you're seeing, don't start with a massive textbook. Start with the "anchors."
- Download a Star Map App: Use something like SkySafari or Stellarium. These apps allow you to toggle between "Common Names" and "Scientific Designations." Seeing both at once helps your brain bridge the gap between mythology and science.
- Learn the Brightest Ten: Don't try to learn everything. Focus on the top ten brightest stars visible from your hemisphere. In the North, that’s Sirius, Vega, Capella, Arcturus, and a few others. Once you know their names and positions, you can use them as landmarks to find the fainter, numbered galaxies.
- Look for the "M" Objects: If you have a pair of binoculars, look for Messier objects. Charles Messier was a comet hunter who got annoyed by fuzzy things that weren't comets, so he made a list of them to ignore. Ironically, that list of "annoyances" became a catalog of the most beautiful objects in the sky.
- Check the IAU Name Server: If you're curious about a specific star, go to the official IAU website. They have a searchable database of every "officially" named star. If the name you're looking for isn't there, it's either a catalog number or a name from a private company that doesn't actually count in the world of science.
The reality of galaxy and star names is that they are a living language. They change as our technology gets better and our understanding of the universe deepens. We might start with a legend about a queen (Cassiopeia), but we end with a precise mathematical coordinate that tells us exactly how far away that queen’s "stars" really are. It’s not as romantic as a fairy tale, but there’s a different kind of beauty in the precision.
To truly master the sky, you have to accept that it's a bit of a mess. Embrace the weird Arabic pronunciations, ignore the "buy a star" scams, and start looking for the NGC numbers. That’s where the real discovery happens.