The Name Game S ome middle school kids in Delray Beach, Florida, recently questioned why our solar system doesn t have its own name. Stars have their own names. Planets have their own names.
Moons have their own names.
Even George W. Bush has his own name, kind of. Surely there are as many solar systems in space as there are chopsticks in China. The students rightly figured it pretentious to call our solar system THE Solar System as though it were the one and only. They also pointed out that anyone living in these other solar systems needs to know what to call ours or we risk it being called something like Pzzdfgaasdtz, Mlpojhgreeesae or Quayle. Rather than just ponder these eternal questions as great thinkers like philosophers and newspaper columnists might, the school kids actually did something about it.