Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning Information & Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning Links at HealthHaven.com

Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning is a book written by Richard Hinckley Allen. First published in 1899 as Star-Names and Their Meanings, this work collected the origins of the names of stars and constellations from a panoply of sources, some primary but most secondary; also telling briefly the various myths and folklore connected with stars in the Greco-Roman tradition; as well as in the Arabic, Babylonian, Indian and Chinese traditions, for which, however, some modern criticism having taken it to task, claiming it to be largely superseded.

The book also provides some cursory details about astronomy as the knowledge level of the end of the 19th century. Similarly, astrology and its history are dealt with briefly in the introduction, and some other basic astrological references are scattered throughout the book, although downplayed.

There is no direct modern equivalent, although Ian Ridpath's Star Tales [1] deals with traditional Greek and Roman constellation mythology, while A Dictionary of Modern Star Names by Paul Kunitzsch and Tim Smart (Sky Publishing, 2006) is an authoritative source on the origin of star names.

The book has been criticized by Paul Kunitzsch^[1] and more recently by Gary D. Thompson for using obsolete sources, and thereby being unreliable on star names and their derivation. Thompson maintains that the discussion on star names is especially unreliable as regards to Arabic star names, and otherwise also to Mesopotamian, and Egyptian constellations and star names^[2].