Astronomy Hacks

Identify Stars by Name

Learn common star names and how they’re pronounced so the other kids won’t laugh at you.

From remotest antiquity, every culture has given names to the brightest stars. Such names are called the common name or proper name of a star. Several hundred of the brightest stars have common names, but most amateur astronomers know and use only a few dozen.

One star may have many common names. Vega, for example, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, is said to have more than 50 known names.

Hundreds more, no doubt, are lost in the mists of time. Many stars have similar names because they share common root names. For example, the syllable “al” is Arabic for “the” and appears in many common star names, as does “deneb” for “tail.”

The same common name is sometimes used for more than one star. When used without qualification, that practice is fortunately limited to less prominent stars. For important stars that share a name, that name is qualified for at least one of the stars. For example, the name Rigel used alone refers unambiguously to the brightest star in Orion. Another bright star named Rigel exists in the constellation Centaurus, but that star is always referred to as Rigel Kentaurus to avoid confusion.

Some common star names—including Sirius, Procyon, Castor, and Pollux— originated with ancient Greek astronomers like Hipparchus and Ptolemy and have come down to us unchanged. The Romans, great engineers but poor scientists, also contributed ...