When did the planet Uranus, which we always as children in school pronounced your ANE-us (and we never thought of an anus) start being pronounced YOUR uh nuss? And why do people think pronouncing the word URINE in the course of this is any improvement over pronouncing your ANUS in the old pronunciation? Why don’t people say ooRANos, for instance, which is closer to the original Greek? My theory is that as people became more crude and vulgar and parents stopped washing out their children’s mouths with soap (or stopped threatening to), children would laugh in school when the teacher taught about Uranus. Thank goodness that Jupiter isn’t pronounced Ju PEETER, or we would have evern more laughs.
My 1980 MW gives the first pronunciation as “YOOR-uh-nus,” or thereabouts.
My 1920ish OED gives the pronunciation as “Yoo-ran-us.” (short “a” as in. . . “as”)
I guess it’s also when Halley went from “hail-lee” to “Hal-Lee”. I guess “ass-teroid” will soon become “ace-toroid”?
- Jinx
FWIW the stress was on the first syllable in Latin: OO-ra-noos (the first u was long, the a was short).
IIRC, the scientist Edmund Halley’s name was pronounced as is currently is. He never pronounced is name “Hail-ee”. Of course, we’ve gone 70 plus years calling the comet “Hail-ee’s Comet”. Though incorrect, I’m not sure if changing the pronounciation of the comet to match that of the scientist is necessary - especially after 70+ years.
Uranus was changed to “URINE-us” in 1986(? - maybe '85) when one of the space probes was preparing to do it’s fly-by. Newscasters around the country realized that three weeks of “your-anus” would never work, especially when also tossing in the reference to a “deep space probe”. The pronounciation change was justified with the Latin pronounciation information.
I blame Tom Brokaw.
But Uranus is a Greek word, isn’t it, and should be pronounced as it is sometimes spelled in true Greek
as OURANOS, ie., oo RAN ohs.
I’m not a nuss, YOUR uh nuss!
Or even, it’s not my nuss, it’s YOUR uh nuss…
According to Futurama, the planet’s name will be changed in the 31st century to prevent all those stupid jokes.
The new name is Urectum.
…that “harassment” was pronounced - HARE us ment
actually i’ve never heard Uranus pronounced that way
Is urine less offensive than anus?
urine-us
yer-anus
your-anus is the wrong pronounciation. The work is Greek and is pronounced your-an-us
Well in British English it’s still “Yuh-RAY-nus” and remains the butt(!) of a wealth of excellent jokes.
don, Ouranos is indeed a Greek god, but “Uranus” is the form the Romans used to refer to that god. The names of the planets (except ours) are Anglicized forms of the Latin names of gods.
I should add that I don’t believe that Latin words adopted into English necessarily have to keep the accent where it was.
Wouldn’t the stress on the original Greek word be on the antepenult?
Perhaps we should have kept the name George’s Star or Georgium Sidus or Herschel.
I’m tempted to believe that C.A. would have us just call the planet “Duckbreath”. It’s simple, it’s easy to pronounce, and there’s nothing really ambiguous about any obscene implications.
Urine-us is just unpleasant. I’d much rather deal with an anus than urine. Especially in a public planetarium.
Those believing that this post added nothing of substance to the debate will find little argument.
I always cringed when I heard newscasters say “We have new photographs of Uranus!”
Pivture this headline: Space Probes Have Reached Uranus. :eek:
I’m thinking the blame should go to the folks who blessed this name. I mean, really, shouldn’t they have seen this …um, coming?
Spritle and Jinx,
I don’t have a cite for this, but I recall a TV debate involving the respected (but weird) British astronomer Patrick Moore in which he said that Halley pronounced his surname Hawl-ey, so neither the ‘old’ or ‘new’ pronunciations of the comet’s name are truly accurate. I always thought the old pronunciation started with Rock ‘n’ Roller Bill Haley?
FWIW, Moore pronounces the planet’s name YOOR-uh-nuss.