{"id":17756,"date":"2019-01-31T09:35:09","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T17:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=17756"},"modified":"2019-01-31T17:37:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T01:37:51","slug":"astronomical-and-astrological-symbols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2019\/01\/31\/astronomical-and-astrological-symbols\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomical and astrological symbols"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Interesting Wikipedia articles on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Astronomical_symbols\">astronomical symbols<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Astrological_symbols\">astrological symbols<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>I\u2019ve been seeing some of these symbols all my life, but had no idea what most of them derived from. For example, I didn\u2019t know that the symbol for Mercury (\u263f) represents Mercury\u2019s caduceus. I\u2019m especially intrigued to learn that the symbol for Jupiter (\u2643) derives from the Greek letter zeta, abbreviating the name Zeus.<\/p>\r\n<p>Also intriguing: the symbols that incorporate letters of the Roman alphabet, such as a symbol for Uranus (\u2645) that represents \u201ca globe surmounted by the letter H (for Herschel, who discovered Uranus),\u201d and an alternate symbol for Neptune that includes \u201ca globe surmounted by the letters \u2018L\u2019 and \u2018V\u2019, (for Le Verrier, who discovered Neptune),\u201d and a symbol for Pluto (\u2647), where the P and L represent both Pluto and astronomer Percival Lowell.<\/p>\r\n<p>I also like a bunch of the minor-planet symbols (which I\u2019m not including in my post here because they aren\u2019t yet part of Unicode). And the symbol for a comet: \u2604. (The comet symbol looks very different in different fonts.)<\/p>\r\n<p>A couple more:<\/p>\r\n<dl>\r\n  <dt>&#x264C; (Leo)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>\u201cA script form of the Greek letter \u2018lambda,\u2019 which is the first letter of the Greek word <i>leon<\/i>, which means \u2018lion.\u2019\u201d<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>&#x264D; (Virgo)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>\u201cDerived from the Greek letters \u03a0\u0391\u03a1, which are the first three letters of the Greek word <i>parthenos<\/i>, which means \u2018virgin.\u2019\u201d<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-symbols","category-etymology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17756"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17784,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17756\/revisions\/17784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}