Earth & SkyGreek → English
Uranus
/ˈjʊərənəs/noun
The seventh planet from the Sun, an ice giant tipped almost onto its side.
The Greek roots
Οὐρανός
Ouranós
sky, heaven
Literally: “sky”
Follow a root:Οὐρανός3 words
The story of the word
William Herschel found it in 1781 and wanted to call it Georgium Sidus after George III, which the rest of Europe declined to accept. Johann Bode proposed Uranus instead, because the genealogy then ran in order: Uranus fathered Saturn, Saturn fathered Jupiter. It is the one planet in the solar system carrying a Greek name rather than a Roman one, and the name only became universal in the 1850s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1780s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
uraniumuranographyUranian
In a sentence
Uranus rolls around the Sun on its side, so each pole gets forty years of darkness.