My very serious 9 year old is studying the planets in school these days. Still hungry for details after the school lesson left her cold, she hied herself to the libarry and checked out half a dozen boks on the planets (very nice series but very different information than what I was given in 3rd grade. Hmmm…). So, there she is in the living room just reading away in The Very Serious Book Of Planetary Science and: Very Serious 9 Year Old: “snerk” Me: “What?” VS9YO: “How do you say U-R-A-N-U-S?” Me: (oh boy, here we go…do we say it like the Brits and make it a pee planet or do we say it like Americans and makeit a butthole? I default to the Yankee pronunciation–we won that war after all), “Uranus. Ha ha, that’s funny isn’t it?” VS9YO: “heeee…that’s funny.” later “snort!” Me: “What?” (even though I know what’s coming) VS9YO: “Daddy, are there rings around Uranus?” “titter” Me: Har har…that’s an old one, kiddo. later VS9YO: “* HAW-HAW-HAW-HAW-HAW *” Me: (what could possibly be left?) “Eh?” VS9YO: “It says here ‘Uranus is a *gas giant’ * !!!”
We’ve been having a ball with that one for a few days now. Apparently in class yesterday when the teacher asked for some characteristics of Uranus she raised her hand and belted out, “Uranus is a gas giant.” Her teacher, the assistant principal, was amused…luckily.
As I’ve noted in the past, Uranus was almost named “George”. William Herschel, the first person to discover a new planet since ancient times, decided to brown-nose and offered to name it “Siderium Georgius” after the King of England. After I posted that on the SDMB someone chimed in that the name actually stuck for a few years. (although some insisted on calling it “Herschel” – Humble yourself , and you will be exalted), until cooler heads prevailed and the planet was given the name of a Classical Graeco-Roman deity, like the others.
I’ll take “Uranus”, any way you choose to pronounce it, over “George” any day.
Slight hijack: you can always go with Classical Latin: OO-rah-nus (or better yet Greek, oo-rah-nós). This pronunciation comes with two (2) Pretention Points.™
Nope, it was a reference to a poem by Charles Lamb, which lampooned George IV for being fat:
The Prince of Whales
Not a fatter fish than he
Flounders round the polar sea.
See his blubbers - at his gills
What a world of drink he swills …
Every fish of generous kind
Scuds aside or shrinks behind;
But about his presence keep
All the monsters of the deep…
Name or title what has he? …
Is he Regent of the sea?
By his bulk and by his size,
By his oily qualities,
This (or else my eyesight fails),
This should be the Prince of Whales.
This discussion reminds me of when I was in ninth grade and took a class titled “History of the Earth”. The teacher was talking about the Cambrian Period and explained that Cambria was an old word for Wales. However, many students heard “whales”, and thus assumed that the arrival of cetaceans was an event significant enough to be commemorated in the nomenclature of the geological record.
(what could possibly be left?) “Eh?”