The Word

Names the sky has worn

Hōkūleʻa is a star of gladness and a canoe. Sopdet is a goddess and a dawn lamp. The same light wears more than one word.

The cousins are here. The rooms behind them are the nights.

• star

  Old English steorra · Proto-Germanic *sternōn

  The common English word is Germanic, kin to Latin stella and Greek astēr, not derived from them in a straight line. Related learned words (stellar, asteroid, astronomy) come through Greek and Latin. A Word plate here is English first, then the cousins.

• Hōkūleʻa

  Hawaiian · hōkū star + leʻa gladness

  Star of Gladness. The name of Arcturus in Hawaiian, and the name of the 1975 voyaging canoe. The canoe is named for the star. The star is not a Hawaiian invention; the name is. Do not treat the lemma as pan-Polynesian.

• Sopdet

  Egyptian Spdt

  The Egyptian name attached to Sirius. Greek Sothis is a rendering. Sopdet is also a goddess. The word holds both a sky object and a cult. They should not be collapsed into one office.

• najm

  Arabic نجم

  A common Arabic word for star. Many catalog names now written in Latin letters passed through Arabic astronomy: rijl (foot) in Rigel; fam al-ḥūt in Fomalhaut. Transmission, not a claim that Arabic is the original sky.

• sidus

  Latin

  A Latin word for star, constellation, or heavenly body. Sidereal time is time by the stars. The adjective is technical. The noun is older.

A Word is a doorway. If there is no room behind it, we do not draw the door.