Controversy Over The Discovery of Haumea - Official Naming

Official Naming

IAU protocol is that discovery credit for a minor planet goes to whoever first submits a report to the MPC with enough positional data for a decent orbit determination, and that the credited discoverer has priority in naming it. This was Ortiz et al., and they proposed the name Ataecina, an Iberian goddess of the underworld. She is the equivalent of Roman goddess Proserpina, which was in turn one of Pluto's lovers. However, as a chthonic deity, Ataecina would only have been an appropriate name for an object in orbital resonance with Neptune, which Haumea was not.

Following guidelines established by the IAU that classical Kuiper belt objects be given names of mythological beings associated with creation, in September 2006 the Caltech team submitted formal names from Hawaiian mythology to the IAU for both (136108) 2003 EL₆₁ and its moons, in order "to pay homage to the place where the satellites were discovered". The names were proposed by David Rabinowitz of the Caltech team. Haumea is the tutelary goddess of the island of Hawaiʻi, where the Mauna Kea Observatory is located. In addition, she is identified with Pāpā, the goddess of the earth and wife of Wākea (space), which is appropriate because 2003 EL₆₁ is thought to be composed almost entirely of solid rock, without the thick ice mantle over a small rocky core typical of other known Kuiper belt objects. Lastly, Haumea is the goddess of fertility and childbirth, with many children who sprang from different parts of her body; this corresponds to the swarm of icy bodies thought to have broken off the dwarf planet during an ancient collision. The two known moons, also believed to have been born in this manner, were thus named after two of Haumea's daughters, Hiʻiaka and Nāmaka.

The dispute over who had actually discovered the object delayed the acceptance of any name, or of formal classification of the object as a dwarf planet. On 17 September 2008, the IAU announced that the two bodies in charge of naming dwarf planets, the Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN) and the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN), had decided on the Caltech proposal of Haumea. At the CSBN, the outcome of the voting was very close, eventually being decided by a single vote. However, the date of the discovery was listed on the announcement as March 7, 2003, the location of discovery as the Sierra Nevada Observatory, and the name of the discoverer was left blank.