Names
In Ancient Greece, Aratus called the crab Καρκινος (Karkinos), which was followed by Hipparchus and Ptolemy. The Alfonsine tables called it Carcinus, a Latinized form of the Greek word. Eratosthenes extended this as Καρκινος, Ονοι, και Φατνη: the Crab, Asses, and Crib.
The Indian language Sanskrit shares a common ancestor with Greek, and the Sanskrit name of Cancer is Karka and Karkata. In Telugu it is "Karkatakam", in Kannada "Karkataka" or "Kataka", in Tamil Karkatan, and in Sinhalese Kagthaca. The later Hindus knew it as Kulira, from the Greek Κολουρος (Koloyros), the term originated by Proclus.
In Ancient Rome, Manilius and Ovid called the constellation Litoreus (shore-inhabiting). Astacus and Cammarus appear in various classic writers, while it is called Nepa in Cicero's De Finibus and the works of Columella, Plautus, and Varro; all of these words signify crab, lobster, or scorpion.
Athanasius Kircher said that in Coptic Egypt it was Κλαρια, the Bestia seu Statio Typhonis (the Power of Darkness). Jérôme Lalande identified this with Anubis, one of the Egyptian divinities commonly associated with Sirius.
Read more about this topic: Cancer (constellation)
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“Ideas about life organize perception; names of emotions organize sensations; rules of syntax organize thought. But pain comes on its own.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Matter and force are the two names of the one artist who fashions the living as well as the lifeless.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)