Names
The colloquial name of Alpha Centauri is Rigel Kent or Rigil Kent, short for Rigil/Rigel Kentaurus, the romanization of the Arabic name رجل القنطورس Rijl Qanṭūris, from the phrase Ar-Rijl al-Qanṭūris "the foot of the Centaur". This is sometimes further abbreviated to Rigel, though that is ambiguous with Beta Orionis. Although the short form Rigel Kent is common in English, the stars are most often referred to by their Bayer designation Alpha Centauri.
A medieval name is Toliman, whose etymology may be Arabic الظلمان al-Ẓulmān "the ostriches". During the 19th century, the northern amateur popularist Elijah H. Burritt used the now-obscure name Bungula, possibly coined from "β" and the Latin ungula ("hoof"). Together, Alpha and Beta Centauri form the "Southern Pointers" or "The Pointers", as they point towards the Southern Cross, the asterism of the constellation of Crux.
In Chinese, 南門 Nán Mén, meaning Southern Gate, refers to an asterism consisting of α Centauri and ε Centauri. Consequently, α Centauri itself is known as 南門二 Nán Mén Èr, the Second Star of the Southern Gate.
To the Australian aboriginal Boorong people of northwestern Victoria, Alpha and Beta Centauri are Bermbermgle, two brothers noted for their courage and destructiveness, who speared and killed Tchingal "The Emu" (the Coalsack Nebula). The form in Wotjobaluk is Bram-bram-bult.
Read more about this topic: Alpha Centauri
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Our foreparents were mostly brought from West Africa.... We were brought to America and our foreparents were sold; white people bought them; white people changed their names ... my maiden name is supposed to be Townsend, but really, what is my maiden name? What is my name?”
—Fannie Lou Hamer (19171977)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (18401928)
“We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority ... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our white mythology. Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.”
—Ihab Hassan (b. 1925)