Book 8, Question 4
Why Do So Many Star Names, Like Altair and Aldebaran, Start with “Al-”?
Many star names start with Al because long ago, Arab astronomers named them! In Arabic, the word al means the. So Altair means the flyer, and Aldebaran means the follower.
More fun facts
- Many star names we use today come from Arabic.
- Over time, one star could pick up dozens of names, many from ancient Greek and Arabic.
- The name Betelgeuse comes from a garbled copy of an Arabic phrase that roughly means 'the hand of Orion.'
- Rigel, Deneb and Aldebaran also got their names through mix-ups in old copied books.
- Fewer than 1,000 stars have proper names, even though the Milky Way holds hundreds of billions of stars.
- Companies that sell star names are not official. No astronomer will ever use those names.
Sources: Scientific American, National Geographic
Questions kids ask
Can you buy a real name for a star?
No. Names sold by companies are not official, and astronomers never use them.