Public mock planetary monikers

You’d think Nasa would know better than to use Twitter to ask the public to help name the seven newly discovered exoplanets orbiting Trappist-1 , given that this exercise has backfired spectacularly in recent years. Who could forget the “Boaty McBoatface” debacle when the UK asked the public to help it name its new polar research ship?

Sure enough, the BBC reports that Nasa’s #7NamesFor7NewPlanets request produced several iterations of [Blanky] Mc[Blank]face, among other whacky suggestions. The more serious ones spanned politics and movies to literature, including a poignant tribute to the seven astronauts who perished in the Challenger disaster in 1986.

The names of newly discovered objects are usually decided on by the discoverer(s), in this case Michaël Gillon of the University of Liège in Belgium, but they have also been open to the public in the past. The International Astronomical Union’s guideline on naming etiquette says the names need to be relatively short, preferably one word, pronounceable, and nonoffensive. They cannot be similar to a name already in use, so all the proposals for more Plutos are invalid. And it’s a big no-no to reference political or living people's names.