China Names Chang'e 3 Lunar Landing Site 'Guang Han Gong' Or 'Moon Palace'

MarkWhittington writes: One of the privileges of landing on the moon is that the country that does so gets to name the landing site. For example, the International Astronomical Union has officially recognized "Tranquility Base", using the Latin designation "Statio Tranquillitatis", as the site where the Apollo 11 astronauts first landed and walked on the moon on July 20, 1969. Now, according to a story in Moon Daily, the site where the Chinese Chang'e 3 probe landed has been named "Guang Han Gong" which translates as "Moon Palace." The name has also been recognized by the IAU.

Palace

[YayaY]

Who's palace is this?

Re:Palace

[thisisauniqueid]

Who's palace is this?

Chang'e's, obviously :-) (She's the Chinese goddess of the moon [wikipedia.org].)

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[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the USSR achieved that prior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1

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[Nutria]

Cultural sensitivity?

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[The Evil Atheist]

Because one is not Chinese and the other is.

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[jandersen]

Why indeed? The scientific community in the West are fond of Latin and (classical) Greek, because those languages were until quite recently and important part of everybody's higher education. Historically, Latin was the language of the elite - it was used by the church in the middle ages and became the shared language in a Europe consisting of many languages and dialects - try to sample, for example, the current, German dialects to get a mild taste of how difficult it must have been to communicate across re

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[KGIII]

I took four years of Latin back in school. It has come in handy. I also took a couple of years of Greek. Those have come in handy. There are loads of languages that I do not speak but I can figure a lot of things out in text. It's not uncommon for me to be at a non-English site and still be able to grasp the gist of it. Obviously, no Cyrillic, Asian, or Arabic type things work for me - I don't know what the characters mean.

I do wonder why it's okay to change the English to Latin but not okay to change the C

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[GuB-42]

Now that nearly everything is made in China, nuking China may be actually be more damaging to us than nuking ourselves.

Moon Palace

[turkeydance]

NOW we have the band's name....

What a coincidence.

[110010001000]

Moon Palace is the name of my favorite local Chinese restaurant.

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[PopeRatzo]

So this means we'll be able to get General Tso's Chicken on the Moon? Well, that's something at least.

Palatio Lunaris?

[Ecuador]

So, if the IAU accepted "Tranquility Base" in the Latin equivalent, I assume something similar happened with the Moon Palace name, right? There's no such mention in TFA, but I don't see why it would not be so...

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[Jack Griffin]

And Latinizing an English name isn't? For any English speaker born in the last 500 years, what is the point of Latin?

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[The Evil Atheist]

Latin naming is a Western scientific convention and perceived as having gravitas. Stop playing the victim.

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[gstoddart]

No no no ... Desinas in victimam.

(And, no, I have no idea if that's right, I just had Google do it. ;-)

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[Jack Griffin]

Latin naming is a Western scientific convention and perceived as having gravitas. Stop playing the victim.

I was trying to make point. I don't use Latin for place names here, why should I do it for the moon?
Tranquility Base serves the purpose, just like "New York" or "London" does. Changing it to Latin sounds like a bit of a wank to me.

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[The Evil Atheist]

And I was making the point that Western scientific convention likes Latin names. The IAU is a scientific body that assigns names for scientific purposes. You are free to continue to use english names for every day communications. But in science, people need to know if you're using a colloquial term or an actual term. Stop turning this into a culture war.

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[Jack Griffin]

And I was making the point that Western scientific convention likes Latin names. The IAU is a scientific body that assigns names for scientific purposes. You are free to continue to use english names for every day communications. But in science, people need to know if you're using a colloquial term or an actual term. Stop turning this into a culture war.

Not a culture war, geniune curiousity. Tranquility is a place name, just like Berlin or Moscow. Why does it have to have a scientific name, when no other geographic location has one?

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[The Evil Atheist]

Because the name is for use by astronomy, hence INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION. These are not legal names. You can call it anything you want, but when the scientists are talking to each other, if you don't care for it, then it doesn't concern you. It's the fact that you and the others seemingly refuse to accept this fact that makes this JAQing off.

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[The Evil Atheist]

You can call it a Latin name if you want. You would be surprised to learn that other countries with their own language even have a different word than "Moon" to refer to the Moon!

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[Ecuador]

I don't understand the comment. My native language is Greek and I speak at least a couple more quite well, so I know various words for the Moon, however I was talking about the IAU. If they can't accept the English of "Tranquility Base" and have to turn it to Latin, why would they accept any other language apart from Latin? Don't you think that's a valid question?

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[The Evil Atheist]

Who said they didn't accept the english? Maybe it was submitted in its Latin form, since science related names in the West is latinized? Why are you so offended?

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[Ecuador]

Again with your assumptions. Why do you now assume I am offended? I am asking. So, for example if the Latin name was submitted for Tranquility Base when the English would have been accepted as well, that's one answer for my question. But you don't actually know, do you? You just give random responses because you assume things about people, you can't actually answer my question.

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[The Evil Atheist]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/J... [rationalwiki.org]

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[The Evil Atheist]

This is not an actual question. It is a whine.

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[91degrees]

I've noticed that those who link to rational wiki are the most petulant, easily offended whiners there are.

Why people think it is a worthwhile website for anything but mockery is beyond me.

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[The Evil Atheist]

Yeah, damn them for holding people to making rational arguments!

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[91degrees]

It would help this position of rational wiki was rational. Sadly it's highly selective, and has a clear editorial bias.

Seriously, here's their article on the Daily Telegraph [rationalwiki.org]. It starts of reasonable and then goes off on a rant about "wingnuttery", and "pro-batshit" article.

Or how about David Cameron [rationalwiki.org], who apparently, " has made it his life's work to surpass his idol in Margaret Thatcher and take her place as the most reviled name in modern British politics."

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[The Evil Atheist]

Oh, I guess that ad hominem logic (or maybe genetic fallacy?) completely invalidates the idea that "just asking questions" is a debate tactic.

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[91degrees]

It's not an ad hominem attack. Your "just asking questions" comment was an ad hominem attack. You were accusing the other poster of "attempting to make wild accusations acceptable". Did you read the article?

You were attacking the character of the person asking the questions, rather than addressing what you perceive as problems in the questions themselves.

My observation that those who link to rationalwiki are easily offended whiners was also an ad hominem. No surprise you didn't spot that (yes, that's

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[The Evil Atheist]

Calling someone out for using "just asking questions" is not an ad hominem attack. Nowhere did I say his arguments were invalidated by his tactics.

Just because I didn't comment on your name calling didn't mean I didn't spot it. That's what people should normally do when encountering ad hominem attacks that has absolutely no bearing on arguments. I know people like you love the comeback argument style of Jerry Springer, but the rest of us have standards.

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[91degrees]

Oh bullshit!

Do you have an answer to the question, or are you just some troll relishing in your own superiority for "calling people out" for asking the wrong sorts of question?

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[Jack Griffin]

How do you differentiate between people who are asking questions, and people who are "Just asking questions"?

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[The Evil Atheist]

If bothered reading the whole thread, you'd see that I did answer the question. He kept asking, at which point, it became a red flag.

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[The Evil Atheist]

When no answer given is good enough and the question is repeated with no counter-evidence or counter-argument.

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[91degrees]

You gave a patronising non-answer which was based on reading a non-existent subtext into the question. It doesn't answer what the IAU's policy is here or whether they will Latinise the name. When the question was clarified, you switched to a tactic of insults.

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[The Evil Atheist]

My answer covered all those grounds either implicitly or explicitly. There's no policy of forced Latinization. Latinization is a purely a Western science convention. I gave those answers and they weren't accepted.

Whether or not they were patronising is irrelevant.

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[91degrees]

You didn't give those answers. At best you offered part of it as a possibility, and that's being charitable.

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[The Evil Atheist]

There's more than one way to state answers. This isn't primary school.

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[Jack Griffin]

But what if the answers aren't actually good enough?
My take on this exchange, is that the GP asked legitimate questions, you responded with speculation and assumptions, none of which answered those questions, he called you out for it, and you got all rationalwiki on him as if that's some sort of get out of jail free card.

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[The Evil Atheist]

It wasn't a legitimate question, just like none of the other whines about "how come we don't get to keep the english name" loaded questions were.

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[Jack Griffin]

It wasn't a legitimate question, just like none of the other whines about "how come we don't get to keep the english name" loaded questions were.

I think these are geniune questions. When someone named Chicago, did someone else decide it wasn't good enough and gave the latin verison instead? Seriously, why does a place name have to be latinized? If everyone knows what the words 'Tranquility Base' mean, why make up a completely foreign verison of the name?
I think this is a valid question,a nd I'm yet to hear a satisfactory answer.

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[The Evil Atheist]

Because they have no scientific use.

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[Jack Griffin]

Anthropologists would disagree...

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[R3d M3rcury]

Yeah. Those Chinese are as bad as the French! [youtube.com]

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[turbidostato]

"You would be surprised to learn that other countries with their own language even have a different word than "Moon" to refer to the Moon!"

So, after all, that's no moon!

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[91degrees]

It's not totally clear but it seems that the IAU uses Latin as the official designation and other nations are free to use their own translation.

So taking a more established place of "Mare Tranquillitatis", it is referred to as Mare Tranquillitatis in a lot of English language articles, but also as The Sea of Tranquility. Likewise, French articles will use both the Latin and "La mer de la Tranquillite", and German article will use the Latin, or "Meer der Ruhe".

Not quite sure what this means for "Moon P

Sounds like the name of a brothel,

[Daniel Matthews]

for people with a very particular fetish.

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[tobiah]

cheese

A tasteful name for once

[DNS-and-BIND]

Amazing, they didn't name it after some anime woman with big tits or a character from a movie popular 40 years ago, or Tolkien. Or that they didn't refuse to honor their own culture at all and use a name from some distant culture. I'm sure one of the Chinese scientists wanted to name the landing site after his parrot, but evidently there were adults in charge who overruled him.

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[The Evil Atheist]

So how many centuries until it is acceptable to use names from anime, movies or Tolkien?

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[Holi]

Isn't anime traditionally Japanese or Korean?

Do Bombing sites count?

[tobiah]

Wondering if Obama got to name the crater he made..
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]

They got the name from

[mark_reh]

a Paul Auster novel.

In other news...

[sonamchauhan]

China today asserted its “indisputable sovereignty” over the landing site surrounding its Chang'e 3 moon probe.

The area under Chinese claim - approximately one lunar hemisphere - has been renamed the 'North China Ocean'. As justification, China noted its long cultural and historical ties to the moon, recently underscored by the arrival of Chang'e 3. China also angrily objected to a US lunar satellite currently orbiting the moon. "It is intolerable", said a Chinese Defense Ministry spokeswoman. "

Doesn't seem equal

[Holi]

So we got naming rights after putting a man on the moon, but China gets them for what, dropping a couple pounds of plastic and metal?

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[The Evil Atheist]

There's no "rights". The IAU is not a legal body, it's a scientific body that, among other things, assigns official names so that astronomers have a internationally accepted name by which to refer things so other scientists can also refer to.