Name

The discovery made headlines across the globe. The Lowell Observatory, which had the right to name the new object, received over 1,000 suggestions from all over the world, ranging from Atlas to [30] Zymal. Tombaugh urged Slipher to suggest a name for the new object quickly before someone else [30] did. Constance Lowell proposed Zeus, then Percival and finally Constance. These suggestions were [31] disregarded. The name Pluto was proposed by Venetia Burney (19182009), an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, [32] England. Burney was interested in classical mythology as well as astronomy, and considered the name, a name for the god of the underworld, appropriate for such a presumably dark and cold world. She suggested it in a conversation with her grandfather Falconer Madan, a former librarian at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library. Madan passed the name to Professor Herbert Hall Turner, who then cabled it [citation needed] to colleagues in the United States. The object was officially named on March 24, 1930. Each member of the Lowell Observatory was allowed to vote on a short-list of three: Minerva (which was already the name for an asteroid), Cronus (which had lost reputation through being proposed by the unpopular [35] astronomer Thomas Jefferson Jackson See), and Pluto. Pluto received every vote. The name was [32] announced on May 1, 1930. Upon the announcement, Madan gave Venetia GB5 (268 as of [36] [32] 2014), as a reward. The choice of name was partly inspired by the fact that the first two letters of Pluto are the initials of Percival Lowell, and Pluto's astronomical symbol ( letters 'PL'.
[37] [33][34]

, unicode ) is amonogram constructed from the ), but has a circle in place of the

Pluto's astrological symbol resembles that of Neptune ( ).

middle prong of the trident (

The name was soon embraced by wider culture. In 1930, Walt Disney was apparently inspired by it when he introduced for Mickey Mouse a canine companion named Pluto, although Disney animator Ben [38] Sharpsteen could not confirm why the name was given. In 1941, Glenn T. Seaborg named the newly created element plutonium after Pluto, in keeping with the tradition of naming elements after newly discovered planets, following uranium, which was named after Uranus, and neptunium, which was named [39] afterNeptune. Most languages use the name "Pluto" in various transliterations. In Japanese, Houei Nojiri suggested the translation Meiou Sei (King of the Underworld star/planet), and this was borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian. Some Indian languages use the name Pluto, but others such as Hindi use the name of Yama, the Guardian of Hell in Hindu mythology, as [41] does Vietnamese. Polynesian languages also tend to use the indigenous god of the underworld, as [41] in Maori Whiro.
[40][41][42] [h]

Demise of Planet X