Except that the phrase “Bill-yuns and Bill-yuns” is fondly recalled by many people. I suspect it’s one of those things that comedians and initators used as a sort of shorthand for Sagan, so that the phrase got associated with him, despite his not saying it (just like “Play it Again, Sam” got associated with Bogie in Casablanca).
When I first met Pepper Mill, she and her friends had come up with a unit they called the 'Sagan"
One Sagan = Billions and Billions
My gosh, that sounds awfully rinkydink to bear a grand name like All-Enveloping Sky. Compared to Earth, it’s just a cobblestone.
My hunch is borne out anyway. In the Tamil language, they use a Tamil form of the Sanskrit name Varuna for Uranus. I wonder if Hindi does too. I wasn’t able to find outer planet names in Hindi, though.
When I’m talking about the planets, it’s most often to college freshmen, the one group more immature than third-graders. So I usually play it safe and go with the (approximately) Latinized Greek “Ooranoos”
Years ago, I taught astronomy to an eighth-grade class, and I always used the same pronunciation for Ouranos as Chronos just described. Slipped into Greek just for that one word.
I’m beginning to realize the value of Wikipedia for quick seat of the pants translations of terms that aren’t published in conventional dictionaries. Find an article on what you want to translate. Then check the sidebar of the same topic in other languages to see if its equivalent is there.
From the Uranus article, I didn’t find it in Hindi but I found these:
Gujarati: યુરેનસ Yurenas. From English.
Kannada: ಯುರೇನಸ್ Yurênas. From English.
Nepali: युरनस Yuranas. From English.
Tamil Vikkipidiya disagrees with the Tamil name வருனன் Varunan used by the Planetary Gazetteer website, and instead calls it யுரேனஸ் Yurênas. Again, from English. Modern Tamilians, given the choice between English and Sanskrit, have a strong preference for English because of a history of resentment of linguistic domination by North Indians.
The English article says Indians call the planet “Aruna,” the charioteer of the sun god Surya. This doesn’t make any sense. I suspect the name Varuna was misread with the initial V- left off, and then re-interpreted because Aruna is coincidentally a Hindu mythological name too.
If the International Astronomical Union wanted to demote a planet, they should have kept Pluto and demoted Uranus strictly on the basis of its idiotic name. :mad:
I can’t help but think you are being a bit inconsiderate towards Uranus. There are other languages in the world than English, and the planet’s name is the same in those. Of course it has the same Greek, or Greco-Roman, origin, and thus is similar to other planets’ names. Why should the speakers of other languages care if the fine planet has a name that sounds funny to English speaker? Instead of changing the name, maybe just change the pronunciation. You’re good at it already: English word ‘Jupiter’ certainly sounds nothing like ‘Iuppiter’ in original Latin. You could, of course, have retained the original pronunciation (for example in Finnish, Uranus is pronounced pretty much like in Latin, with short vowels). Or alter the name a little, like when Saturnus was shortened to Saturn: Uranus would become Uran, just like it already is in Russian ( Уран ), or Urano like in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Another creative way would be to obsolete the word ‘you’ like was done with ‘thou’ by inventing a new second person pronoun: few hundred years ago when ‘thou’ was still in use, stuff like Thyanus or Thianus would likely have been funny to children, but kids speaking today’s English wouldn’t understand that…
Also, I don’t see why the planet’s name couldn’t be Uranus (or variation of it) in the Indian languages, too. The English giggle-worthy words certainly don’t exist there, and it’s just as sensible name as other planets’ Greco-Roman designations. Besides, while Indian Varuna is a cognate to Greek Uranos, it’s still not the same deity. And as said, Uranus is not a mere “English” name, it’s common to every European language, albeit the names for outer planets came to India through English. Though, do the various Indian languages tend to use native names for the five planets visible to naked eye, instead of Greek/Latin? If so, it would be logical to invent ‘own’ names for Uranus and Neptune, at least, and maybe also for the dwarf planets like poor Pluto.
pronunciation. 
