Names
Like most of the other maria on the Moon, Mare Serenitatis was named by Giovanni Riccioli, whose 1651 nomenclature system has become standardized. Previously, William Gilbert had included it among the Regio Magna Occidentalis ("Large Western Region") in his map of c.1600. Pierre Gassendi had included it among the 'Homuncio' ('little man'), referring to a small humanoid figure that he could see among the maria; Gassendi also referred to it as 'Thersite' after Thersites, the ugliest warrior in the Trojan War. Michael Van Langren had labelled it the Mare Eugenianum ("Eugenia's Sea") in his 1645 map, in honour of Isabella Clara Eugenia, queen of the Spanish Netherlands. And Johannes Hevelius included it within Pontus Euxinus (after the classical name for the Black Sea) in his 1647 map.
Read more about this topic: Mare Serenitatis
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“There are names written in her immortal scroll at which Fame blushes!”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for all the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)