Origin of star name "Albireo"
Michael A. Covington
1515 edition of Ptolemy's Almagest; thus Allen, _Star Names_, and Burnham,
_Celestial Handbook_.
Fine, but what is "ireo"? I find no such Latin word (ireus, ireum, etc.) in
the Oxford Latin Dictionary, and looking at an English translation of the
Almagest (which is all I could lay hands on), I see nothing involving "from
X" in the star's description. It's the star in the beak of the Swan,
Cygnus.
Can anyone shed any light on this? Gratias vobis ago...
--
Michael A. Covington / AI Center / The University of Georgia
http://www.ai.uga.edu/~mc http://www.CovingtonInnovations.com <><
Axel Harvey
> The name of the star Albireo is supposedly a misreading of "ab ireo" in a
> 1515 edition of Ptolemy's Almagest; thus Allen, _Star Names_, and Burnham,
> _Celestial Handbook_.
>
> Fine, but what is "ireo"? I find no such Latin word (ireus, ireum, etc.) in
> the Oxford Latin Dictionary,
Nor in my Latin-French Quicherat. But I'll wager Allen was all wet, and
the "l" was there all along. "Albireo" may be the corruption of a Latin
word with the root "alb-", referring to whiteness; cf "albare", to
whiten; "albor", whiteness; "albus", white, pale, clear; etc.
I know, you astronomers out there, they ain't white. Don't blame me!
Axel the Astrologer
Gordon
"Michael A. Covington" <See http://www.CovingtonInnovations.com for address>
wrote in message news:8lituv$oju$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net...
> The name of the star Albireo is supposedly a misreading of "ab ireo" in a
> 1515 edition of Ptolemy's Almagest; thus Allen, _Star Names_, and Burnham,
> _Celestial Handbook_.
>
> Fine, but what is "ireo"? I find no such Latin word (ireus, ireum, etc.)
in
> Almagest (which is all I could lay hands on), I see nothing involving
"from
> X" in the star's description. It's the star in the beak of the Swan,
> Cygnus.
What about hireus, or hiereus? Initial H tended to vanish in late and vulger
latin.
Nathan Rose
> 1515 edition of Ptolemy's Almagest; thus Allen, _Star Names_, and Burnham,
> _Celestial Handbook_.
>
> Fine, but what is "ireo"? I find no such Latin word (ireus, ireum, etc.) in
> the Oxford Latin Dictionary, and looking at an English translation of the
> Almagest (which is all I could lay hands on), I see nothing involving "from
> X" in the star's description. It's the star in the beak of the Swan,
> Cygnus.
Al-bireo, the beak (Arabic, not Latin).
Thus also Al-magest, the greatest
And:
Al-debaran, the follower
Al-gol, the ghoul
and many others.
Nathan Rose
frank
ndr...@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
> > The name of the star Albireo is supposedly a misreading of "ab
ireo" in a
> > 1515 edition of Ptolemy's Almagest; thus Allen, _Star Names_, and
Burnham,
> > _Celestial Handbook_.
> >
> > Fine, but what is "ireo"?
I think Nathan has said it all. Like you, I`m completely baffled by
this so-called `mis-reading` or `mistranslation` of `ab ireo` - which,
incidentally, neither Burnham or Allen actually *says* is Latin:
certainly the word `ireo` doesn`t seem to exist in Latin. The Arabic
given by Nathan seems to be a perfectly reasonable description of the
star, in the context of Cygnus.
cheers
frank
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Michael A. Covington
Makes great sense. I don't know Arabic. Do you have a published source I
can site for this?
Jonathan Silverlight
<See@http.?.CovingtonInnovations.com> writes
>The name of the star Albireo is supposedly a misreading of "ab ireo" in a
>1515 edition of Ptolemy's Almagest; thus Allen, _Star Names_, and Burnham,
>_Celestial Handbook_.
>
>the Oxford Latin Dictionary, and looking at an English translation of the
>Almagest (which is all I could lay hands on), I see nothing involving "from
>X" in the star's description. It's the star in the beak of the Swan,
>Cygnus.
>
James Pickering's "1001 Questions Answered about Astronomy" says it's
"supposed to mean "The Chicken's Head", but there does not seem to be a
word resembling Albireo in Arabic or any related language. It may be a
corruption of a word that is so far from the original that it cannot be
traced".
BTW, does anyone know of a more recent edition of this book? My copy is
dated 1960 and is getting a bit dog-eared.
frank
Jonathan Silverlight <jsi...@merseia.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> James Pickering's "1001 Questions Answered about Astronomy" says it's
> "supposed to mean "The Chicken's Head", but there does not seem to be
a
> word resembling Albireo in Arabic or any related language.
Sadly, that`s it, I think; the name in English is Albireo / The
Chicken`s (Swan`s ?) Beak - but the Arabic for `Hen`s Beak` is in fact
Al Minhar al Dajajah. There doesn`t even seem to be a star called
anything like `Ireus` that I can find, which would make `ab ireo` `from
Ireus` (ie angle or distance from.....) The mystery remains as to what
exactly was misread, misunderstood, or mistranslated :-)
I wonder whether it could be a proper name of (eg) an early astronomer,
provenance unknown - hence `a star named *by Ireus*[ab Ireo]` misread
as `a star named Albireo` ? Makes perfect grammatical sense, if nothing
else - (though I have to say I cannot find any mention of an early
astronomer by that name..... Any offers ? Could be a Latinized form of
something very different, I suppose.)
> BTW, does anyone know of a more recent edition of this book? My copy
is
> dated 1960 and is getting a bit dog-eared.
Try www.bookfinder.com which lists ten copies, some older than yours;
but the latest is 1976. A mere 25 years old !
Michael A. Covington
> Chicken`s (Swan`s ?) Beak - but the Arabic for `Hen`s Beak` is in fact
> Al Minhar al Dajajah. There doesn`t even seem to be a star called
> anything like `Ireus` that I can find, which would make `ab ireo` `from
> Ireus` (ie angle or distance from.....) The mystery remains as to what
> exactly was misread, misunderstood, or mistranslated :-)
"Al minhar" to "Albireo" is not a totally impossible Latinization.
Pronounce them both fast...
Paul Schlyter
Jonathan Silverlight <jsi...@merseia.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> James Pickering's "1001 Questions Answered about Astronomy" says it's
> "supposed to mean "The Chicken's Head", but there does not seem to be a
> corruption of a word that is so far from the original that it cannot be
> traced".
And people who knew English as bad as most people here know Arabic
could easily write "The Beek" as "Thebeek". Then they could get an
English disctionary, and when looking up "Thebeek" they would fail to
find it...
In Arabic, "Al" (as in "Al Bireo", "Al Giedi") and "El" (as in "El
Nath") are equivalent to the English "The". In Arabic they're both
spelled the same way (alef el), but it may be pronounced differenty,
and therefore, when transcribed to the Latin alphabet, it's transcribed
as "Al" most times, but sometimes as "El".
Most traditional names of individual stars originate from the Arabic.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40, S-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at saaf dot se or paul.schlyter at ausys dot se
WWW: http://hotel04.ausys.se/pausch http://welcome.to/pausch
Michael A. Covington
> > "supposed to mean "The Chicken's Head", but there does not seem to be a
> > word resembling Albireo in Arabic or any related language. It may be a
> > corruption of a word that is so far from the original that it cannot be
> > traced".
>
> "Al Bireo" is Arabic for "The Beek".
Can you confirm this from your knowledge of Arabic? What is your source?
Thanks.
A. Moore
The list of Arabic star names at <http://www.jas.org.jo/star.html> does
not include albireo. The word could be a corruption of an Arabic word,
but without a dictionary at hand I can't tell you which, or what it's
meaning might be.
Al Moore
Michael A. Covington
> not include albireo. The word could be a corruption of an Arabic word,
> but without a dictionary at hand I can't tell you which, or what it's
> meaning might be.
I've asked an Arabic scholar. I know the standard works about star names;
what I want to know is the real origin of "Albireo," since the one in Allen
(and repeated by Burnham) appears to be wrong.
Ah to be back in Cambridge... I'd just nip over to the U.L., find this 1515
Almagest, and see what it actually says. Our library has microfilms of a
couple of early Almagest editions but not this one. There is certainly
nothing like "ab ireo" in Copernicus' paraphrase of the Almagest (in his De
Revolutionibus).
Raincrow
http://einstein.stcloudstate.edu/Dome/constellns/albireo.html have it as
Latin for "ab ireo" from Ptolemy.
A. Moore wrote:
>
> Michael A. Covington wrote:
> >
> > > > James Pickering's "1001 Questions Answered about Astronomy" says it's
> > > > "supposed to mean "The Chicken's Head", but there does not seem to be a
> > > > word resembling Albireo in Arabic or any related language. It may be a
> > > > corruption of a word that is so far from the original that it cannot be
> > > > traced".
> > >
> > > "Al Bireo" is Arabic for "The Beek".
> >
> > Can you confirm this from your knowledge of Arabic? What is your source?
> >
> > Thanks.
>
> The list of Arabic star names at <http://www.jas.org.jo/star.html> does
> not include albireo. The word could be a corruption of an Arabic word,
> but without a dictionary at hand I can't tell you which, or what it's
> meaning might be.
>
> Al Moore
Michael A. Covington
> The guys at
> http://einstein.stcloudstate.edu/Dome/constellns/albireo.html have it as
> Latin for "ab ireo" from Ptolemy.
Right -- hence my original question. They got it from Allen, "Star Names."
But there is no Latin word "ireo" (ireus, ireum, etc.) as far as I can tell,
and nothing like that in Ptolemy's text as far as I can tell.
Nathan Rose
>
> Makes great sense. I don't know Arabic. Do you have a published source I
> can site for this?
I was at the library today, and looked into this a bit more. It's more complicated
than I thought, and involved several steps. Apparently this is what happened. Ptolemy
called the constellation ornis, the bird. The Arab translator didn't recognize this
word, and transcribed it differently. When it was subsequently translated into Latin,
the translator read something like eirinim, which he glossed as "ab ireo", from ireus,
which was, it seems, the name of an herb. (My Latin dictionaries do not contain this
word, so I presume it's a medieval coinage.)
Up to this point we are still talking about the name given to the constellation. But
because of the way the text was arranged on the page, "ab ireo" was set by itself, and
was taken to be the name of the first star. Since the transmission was known to be
Arabic, an editor "corrected" the name to Al-bireo.
Nathan Rose