Meanings of minor-planet names

This is a list of minor planets that have been named officially. They are named by the Working Group Small Body Nomenclature (WGSBN) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The list is of pages that are not complete. Each page covers 1000 minor planets. All pages that exist are in .

There are hundreds of thousands numbered minor planets. Very few are named, however. , there are 23,081 named minor planets. There are 600,000 numbered ones. Most of the minor planets are named after people. Most of them were astronomers. Many of them are things from mythology or fiction. Many minor planets are also named after places. These can be things like cities, towns, villages, mountains, volcanoes, rivers, observatories, organizations, clubs and astronomical societies. Some are named after animals and plants. A few minor planets are named after other things such as supercomputers and some origins are unknown.

The first few thousand minor planets have all been named. The near-Earth asteroid (4596) 1981 QB is the lowest-numbered unnamed minor planet. The first 3 pages in the table contain 1,000 named entries each. The first 13 and 33 pages contain at least 500 and 100 named entries each. The first range to contain no entries is 258001–259000. There are also many name conflicts with other astronomical objects. The name conflicts are usually with planetary satellites. 

After the discovering astronomer discovers a planet, they can ask for that planet to be named a specific way. New minor planet names are approved and published by IAU's WGSBN many times every year. The WGSBN has a set of rules for naming minor planets. These are from syntax restrictions to non-offensive meanings. Over the years the rules have changed many times. In the beginning, for example, most minor planets were named after female characters from Greek and Roman mythology.

 Index 
This is a list of all partial lists on the meanings of minor planets (MoMP). Each table has 100,000 minor planets. Each cell is a list of 1,000 numbered minor planets in order. Grayed out cells do not yet have any named minor planets. For an introduction, see .

 Meanings from 1 to 100,000 

  Meanings from 100,001 to 200,000 

  Meanings from 200,001 to 300,000 

  Meanings from 300,001 to 400,000 

  Meanings from 400,001 to 500,000 

  Meanings from 500,001 to 600,000 

  Meanings from 600,001 to 700,000 

 Related pages 

 List of minor planets
 List of named minor planets (alphabetical)

 References 


 Other websites 

 Asteroids discovered at the observatory of San Marcello Pistoiese in Italy
 Asteroids discovered by Uppsala astronomers
 Asteroids honoring people associated with Cornell Department of astronomy
 Asteroids named after members of staff and graduates of the Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland
 Asteroids with Canadian Connections
 Asteroids with a Hamburg connection
 Hungarian asteroids
 In Our Skies journalistic article on asteroid nomenclature
 Institute of Applied Astronomy's list of (accented) names
 Kleť Numbered Minor Planets
 List of "Dutch" asteroids (in Dutch)
 Planetary Society asteroids
 The Ceres Connection (asteroids named after students)
 Database of the minor planets
 The JPL Small-Body Database Browser
 discovery circumstances and minor planets It links to the Harvard University Center for Astronomy MPES (Minor Planet Ephemeris Service) that shows minor planets.
 The Minor Planet Center also has a search engine

 *
meanings