But isn’t Dionysus a Greek god?
Him and Demeter were the only Deities coming to mind with a ‘D’ when I posted originally.
Yes. Ouranos is too.
I learned the mnemonic as “Mary’s violet eyes made John stay up nights playing.”
That mnemonic didn’t take the asteroids into account, unfortunately.
No no: Goofy! It has so got to be named Goofy. That way we can have “The Regular Planets” and “The Disney Planets.”
My Very Enigmatic Mother Just Stacked Up Nine Pressure Gauges.
Mother Very Easily Made a Jam Sandwich Using No Peanuts.
We learned it, “My very energetic mother just showed us nine planets.” Not very interesting, but at least we knew why we were memorizing the sentence.
Mother Very Thoughtfully Made A Jelly Sandwich Under No Protest.
Personally, I’ve never need a mnenomic. That one just stuck in my mind.
Will the scientists please make up their mind about the planet debate? Do we need to subtract Pluto? I have no opinion on it, but someone smarter than me needs to tell me what is what.
My Very Excellent Mother Just Sat Upon New Paint. It was kind of clumsy in my opinion, but it worked. Fmoss3
Good thing you don’t need that particular mnenomic. 
Madeline’s Voluptous Emus Made Jesse Sigh Unctuously? Nasty Pervert!
Actually, we learned it as, Mary Very Easily Makes Jelly Sandwiches Using No Peanutbutter.
Yes, simply memorising the planets’ names in order was the practice at my school too.
I learned the planet names in order, then a teacher taught us “Mary Very Early Made Jane Some Unusually Nice Pie”. I always thought the grammar was a bit off. It takes me longer to name the planets with a mnenomic than by memory.
Actually, Pluto fits the Bode pattern almost perfectly. It’s Neptune that isn’t supposed to be there according to the relation.
As for what’s a planet and what isn’t, the Asteroids were considered real planets for about a half century after the discovery of Ceres (as a result of the Bode relation, for the record - I’m a big Bode’s Law fan). Link.
I think the time will eventually come when Pluto and the other Kuiper Belt objects are no longer regarded as planets, but patience is required. It takes the world at large some time to accept these things.
People, it’s: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.
That’s what the teachers at the Middle School that I worked at for 9 years taught the kids.
Having never heard the mnenomic (I thought it was mneumonic, like pneumatic, oops), I opened the thread thinking you got new pizza untensils, wondered why nine, and then thought that I was envious and would love a set of pizza utensils.
But this is fun too.
Not all of the Roman deity names have been taken, not by a long shot!
I vote for Vulcan. 
Mary’s Vagina Eats My Johnson…
…Okay, I got nothin’.
Vulcan is sort of taken and is the name of a hypothetical planet that orbits between Mercury and the sun.
I’ve also heard it applied to Nega-Earth (Earth’s shadowy opposite that supposedly orbits exactly on the opposite side of the sun), and the planet which may or may not have existed between Mars and Jupiter.
But if we did use Vulcan, we could modify all the mnemonics with ‘… verily.’
Quote:
Originally Posted by asterion
Mother Very Thoughtfully Made A Jelly Sandwich Under No Protest.
Obviously asterion (an appropriate username for this thread) is of the same mind as was my college roommate, who believed Earth should be called Terra in keeping with the Roman-Latin theme evident in names of (most of) the other planets.