The Stars Renamed

A. P. (Alan Patrick) Herbert, wag, Senior Member of Parliament for Oxford University and Britain's most whimsical reformer, has embarked on a new crusade.* Bedridden with a bad foot late last year, Herbert did not count wallpaper patterns but renamed the stars. He found their old names "queer, unworthy and inept." He has renamed some 300 stars, for a starter.

Herbert disclaims any intention of being "narrowly and offensively British." But the Great Bear (which Americans "flippantly but sensibly call the Dipper") becomes Great Britain; its stars: Shakespeare, Caxton, Pitt, Johnson, Wren, Reynolds and Handel. Herbert gives Cassiopeia to the U.S. Says he: "I shall graciously permit the Americans to have some say . . . but I have put down Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Grant and Roosevelt (he does not say which), and a smaller one for Paul Jones."

The constellation Leo becomes Russia --"one end of Leo is a perfect sickle and the other end is much more like a hammer than any part of a lion." Lenin, Stalin and Timoshenko are brightly starred, with "room still for such names as Sevastopol and Smolensk and Stalingrad." China gets Cygnus (Chiang Kai-shek for Deneb, Confucius for Albireo, etc.). Germany and Japan get nary a one, but Hitler and Mussolini are placed in the constellation Draco (the Snake) renamed The Tyrants. Sirius, brightest star in the sky, falls in the constellation of South Africa and is called Smuts. There are constellations for the arts, science and for children (with stars for Alice and Peter Pan).

Whether astronomers like his nomenclature or not, Herbert calls his crusade "a practical matter. . . . I am shocked to find how little the average seaman knows of the stars: for the average seaman, any day, may find himself in charge of an open boat." He wishes the astronomers would get together and say: "There is not much more that we can do in this mad war, though our skill and studies are guiding the ships, the aircraft and the soldiers every night. We honor the work of the Arab and the Roman who went before us, but these old names are hindering the spread of knowledge and hiding the glory of the stars. They are perhaps the most stupendous work of God and it is not fitting that they should be named after the beaks of hens, the claws of scorpions or the mouths of fish."

*Others: for divorce-law reform (he wrote Holy Deadlock); for topless bathing suits (men's); in defense of the King's English against fancy talk (''supplementary servings without charge" should read "free second helpings").

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