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By Root 242 0

they would say. The fact that the IAU would say that a dwarf planet is not a planet demonstrates that the entire decision must be wrong. What no one making these arguments remembers—or admits to remembering—is that the only people who liked the phrase dwarf planet at first were the ones who hoped that it would save Pluto when the other planets were renamed “classical planets.” Yet Resolution 5B was a specific vote on this issue, and it clearly stated that dwarf planets are not planets—just as Matchbox cars are not cars, stuffed animals are not animals, and chocolate bunnies are not bunnies. I don’t particularly like the phrase dwarf planet, either, but it is serviceable.

I’ve heard the argument that the definition is unworkable because it is inconsistent with the rest of astronomy. Nowhere else in astronomy, some say, do you classify an object by its relationship to its neighbors instead of by its own individual properties. Therefore the only definition that makes sense is that all round things are planets, regardless of where they find themselves. Well, not all round things are planets, just round things that orbit stars. And what if the round thing orbits another round thing? Well, then it is a moon, of course. But but but, doesn’t that violate the rule that things aren’t defined in relationship to other things? Well, yes, but that’s just common sense, they would say. Okay. Got it.

• • •

A few weeks after Xena became Eris, I received a note from a friend:

The Spanish are trying to steal Santa again.

The Spanish? I hadn’t thought much about them in the preceeding eighteen months and certainly hadn’t heard anything from them. By this time, I was almost able to laugh about the whole incident.

But they were really back.

After the IAU decided to call round things dwarf planets, Easterbunny and Santa were eligible for real names, too, and the Spanish astronomers quickly submitted a name for Santa—because, of course, the discoverers get to name their discovery.

Rumor had it that the IAU was going to act swiftly, so Chad, David, and I quickly consulted and came up with our own name: Haumea, after the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth. Like the name Eris, the name Haumea seemed almost custom made for this object. The goddess Haumea gave birth to her many children by breaking them off from parts of her body. Santa the dwarf planet also had many children throughout the solar system that had broken off from its body. It seemed a perfect fit. And whatever the name was, it definitely should not be whatever the Spanish astronomers were submitting!

I wrote an impassioned letter to the various committees of the IAU proposing the name Haumea and also proposing names for two moons: Hi’iaka, the patron goddess of the Big Island, and Namaka, a water spirit, both daughters of Haumea. In the letter, I laid out—once again—all that had transpired. And then I explained why it was important that the IAU choose wisely which name to use. There was no question that eighteen months earlier someone had done something unseemly. If the Spanish astronomers had fraudulently claimed discovery of something that they had never actually discovered, it would be appropriate for the IAU to condemn such a thing. If, on the other hand, their discovery was legitimate, they should be exonerated and I should be censured for making a spectacularly damaging wrongful accusation. Through choosing a name, the IAU would be officially choosing a side. I thought that the members of the IAU would not want to take sides and would instead pick a name themselves. I urged them not to cop out. No one else had the authority to render any type of meaningful verdict.

I sent in my letter and waited to see what would happen.

And I waited.

Lilah’s second birthday came around.

And I waited.

Lilah’s third birthday came around.

I was hoping that the IAU was taking its job quite seriously and had launched a multiyear investigation into what had happened. Apparently not. My inside sources tell me that nothing happened that entire time. Finally I got a tip that making a decision