What names did Ancient Greeks give to stars?

Question

Many stars today have Arabic names, but they were all known to Ancient Greeks and Romans like Hipparchus and Ptolemy. I am interested in how the Greeks, specifically, called individual stars in the sky, did they give them names like planets of the Solar system are named now or did they use some form of designation? What are their equivalents to many Arabic names we have today?

I searched "Ancient Greek star names" on Google Search and Google Scholar, but I didn't find anything except common names that are used today and modern designations. I also found some books with names in various names, but nothing about names used by Ancient Greeks and Romans. I didn't however do any deep research.

Answer 1

There do not seem to be a lot of individually named stars in Greek astronomical mythology. The poem Phenomena by Aratus (c. 315/310—240 BC) lists 48 constellations, but only six individual stars are named. The Catasterismi by Eratosthenes (c. 276 BC—195/194 BC), of which only a later summary has survived, adds mythological stories to these. Ptolemy's Almagest, already treated in another answer, added only five more individual star names.

It was only Persian writer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi which in his Book of Fixed Stars (964 AD), expanding on Ptolemy, recorded a larger number of names.

The apparent difference between Greek and Arabic traditions seems to have been that the Greek saw star constellations as real pictures in the sky and told stories about them collectively, while the Arabic identified also individual stars as representations of people or animals.

For an overview, see the online book Ian Ridparth: Startales. Myths, legends, and history of the constellations. Chapter 3 and 4 list the 88 constellations that are commonly named by modern astronomers and tracks their individual history, including names used by Babylonians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs.

Answer 2

I take it you don't read ancient Greek, and I don't either, which makes this a bit difficult.

Looking at a translation of Ptolemy's Almagest, which catalogs over a thousand stars, he rarely indicates individual star names. When he does, these are just references to the name of the constellation in which they appear. Vega in the constellation of Lyra is described as "The brightest star on the shell, called Lyra". Altair in Aquilla is "the bright star on the place between the shoulders, called Aquilla." Capella is named as such. These translated constellation names are Latin rather Greek, but they give an idea.

In the case of Capella, Wikipedia indicates that name "is the translation of the Greek star name Aἴξ (aix) meaning 'the Goat'." So there's one for you. I suspect if you look up enough individual well-known stars on Wikipedia you may find a few others.

Answer 3

Castor and Pollux, two stars in Gemini, have Greek names. Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, is a Latin name meaning "little king", but it was named by Copernicus in the early modern age.

I have a copy of Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1899, 1963.

It is arranged by the constellations which were then in use. It describes their various myths.

And it lists many of the naked eye stars in each constellation, giving their names in Arabic and other languages, including often Greek and Chinese.

Unfortunately, he gives the Greek names using the Greek Alphabet, so you will need a table of the Greek Alphabet to see how the Greek names were pronounced.

Anyway, it is online here.