Initially, from 2015 to 2018, WGSN collected star names that are in common use already. The main goal was approval of one (among many) spelling variants. It was a process accompanying the public IAU “NameExoWorlds”-Campaigns (NEWC). During this venture, the IAU was faced with a gap in standard nomenclature of stars and WGSN was established to deal with some conflicting suggestions of names from different cultures. As a consequence of the observed challenges and lack of profound collections (missing references, intentional or accidental spelling mistakes etc.), WGSN developed “Guidelines”, released in the Triennial Report 2018, and the strategy to reserve the stars brighter than 6.5 mag for traditional cultural names and leave only fainter stars for the NEWCs.
In 2022, the IAU OAO team that organized the third NEWC decided to ban naming stars after people. Due to several more requests in the same year and the foreseeable political explosiveness of such naming, we decided to avoid epoynomous star names from now on. Great people can be honored in the night sky by naming lunar craters or asteroids after them. Stars, however, should never bear official proper names of people.
Despite several mistakes that we spotted in the early name releases, we admitted that any change in the IAU-CSN would increase confusion. In 2023, we decided that we won’t change the released names but use our etymology website and our new “All Skies Encyclopaedia” (project start 2024, release 2025) to explain the mistake and the correct version.
Work Strategy (2024/25)
In the future, IAU WGSN naming will proceed according to the following strategy:
- We create a collection of names of historical and indigenous constellations, their celestial areas, and their etymologies.
- Stars that are naked-eye visible (brighter 6.5 mag) will be given names of obsolete historical constellations.
- Only stars fainter than Vmag=6.5 are considered for the suggestions from Naming Campaigns.
For the naming of naked-eye stars, we develop a scoring system and release the names after consensus within our group.
Guidelines (2018)
! In case of Indigenous names from living ethnic groups, these groups need to grant their permission for the use of their cultural heritage on a global scale. !
- Names should be pronounceable in some language.
- Names should be non-offensive.
- Names should not be too similar to an existing name of a star, planet, planetary satellite, or minor planet.
- Names of all individuals are prohibited for bright stars, except for rare cases with demonstrated historical precedence and widespread international diffusion. Contrived names are discouraged, except for rare cases with demonstrated historical precedence and widespread international diffusion.
- Names of events principally known for political or military activities are prohibited.
- Names of a purely or principally commercial nature are prohibited.
- Names of pet animals are prohibited.
- Acronyms, or names based on acronyms, are prohibited for proper names (acronyms could be confused with designations).
- Adopted names will follow The IAU Style Manual (Wilkins 1989). Proper names are transliterated to Latin alphabet, have an initial capitalized letter, and never contain numbers. Punctuation marks are discouraged. The names will be reported in Latin alphabet, but names may be quoted with original accents and diacritic marks where appropriate.
- The WGSN explicitly recognizes the names of exoplanets and their host stars approved by the EC WG Public Naming of Planets and Planetary Satellites (Montmerle et al. 2016).