Bake-eo

"Bage Eo" mentioned in Erdland's list of Marshallese names in 1914.

A Marshallese star name for γ Oph. Pronounced "bakey-yew". In 2024, the IAU made this an official star name. Both spellings, "Bake-eo" and "Bake Eo" are accepted.

Etymology and History

Necklace from sperm whale teeth, glass beads, spondylus disks, plant fiber, Marshall Islands, 1891 (Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde München, CC0)

This Marshallese star name was originally recorded as Bage Eo by the Catholic missionary August Erdland, who lived in the Jaluit Atoll from 1904 to 1914 (Erdland 1914: 79 #15). Erdland identifies it as γ Oph but also possibly as Procyon (alpha Canis Minoris). Abo et al. (2019) render the name as Bake-eo.

Meaning of the term

Bake is the spondylus mussel whose shell is used to make necklaces. A debwāāl is a drill used to drill holes in the mussels for that purpose. The asterism Debwāāl-eo ("the drill"), identified as 67, 68 and 70 Oph (originally recorded as Räbuäl eo by Erdland, p. 79 #14 and "67, 68, 70 Ophiuchi bilden einen „Drillbohrer" page 90), is seen next to the star Bake-eo (γ Oph), the shell itself.

The particle "Eo" simply means "here it is, take it" (Abo et al. 2019).

Marshallese Sky Culture

Erdland had observed the culture(s) on various islands and interviewed Elders; his knowledge comes from stargazing with Elders. He writes (Erdland 1914: 76,77):

"Die Stern- und Wellenkunde ist kein Gemeingut aller Eingeborenen noch das Monopol der Häuptlingsfamilien, sondern vielmehr das Geheimnis besonders intelligenter und beobachtungsfähiger Individuen, die diese Kenntnis in ihren Familien vererben. Infolge dieser Kenntnis stehen solche Familien über den gewöhnlichen Untertanen, wenn sie auch von Geburt aus ranglos sind. Diese Restriktion vorausgesetzt, kann ruhig behauptet werden, daß ein gewöhnlicher Eingeborener die Sterne und Wellen nicht kennen darf. Wohl mag ihm aus alten Erzählungen der Name dieses oder jenes Sternes bekannt sein, nicht jedoch dessen Position am Himmelsgewölbe."

English

"The science of stars and waves is not the common property of all indigenous people, nor is it the monopoly of the chiefdoms, but rather the secret of particularly intelligent and observant individuals who pass this knowledge on within their families. As a result of this knowledge, such families stand above the ordinary subjects, even as they are rankless by birth. Assuming this restriction, it can safely be said that an ordinary native cannot know the stars and waves. He may know the name of this or that star from old tales, but not its position in the firmament."

The star knowledge is secret knowledge of specific families:

"Die Stern- und Wellenkunde gilt als ein kostbares Erbgut, das außerhalb des Familienverbandes niemand besitzen darf. Sie ist ein Schatz, der die Familie in den Augen der Häuptlinge sowohl als der Untertanen hebt." [...]

"Die Hauptseefahrer wohnen auf den nördlich von Ailinlablab gelegenen Atollen Kuajlen, Lae, Ujaä, Ronrik und Ronlab. Unter ihnen möchte ich als die bekanntesten angeben : Lowane, Lekoujabue, Lalur und Loien (Frau Zeit)."

English

Star and wave lore is considered a precious heritage that no one outside the family is allowed to possess. It is a treasure that elevates the family in the eyes of both the chiefs and the subjects. [...]

The main seafarers live on the atolls of Kuajlen, Lae, Ujaä, Ronrik and Ronlab to the north of Ailinlablab. The best known of these are Lowane, Lekoujabue, Lalur and Loien (Mrs Time).

The better social position of the star people leads to special rights, such as the use of larger estates and the chieftain's right to walk on the weather side of the island. Fathers often have a favourite child to pass on this knowledge and it does not matter whether it is a boy or a girl. Erdland reports that the Marshallese stargazers are very modest and when asked if they know the stars they say "some of them". He got them to share their knowledge with him by asking them about their ancestors:

Alsbald wird er das Lob seiner Voreltern singen: sie haben zuerst die Seefahrt und Sterne gekannt; sie haben auf ihren Fahrten Krieg geführt und den jetzigen Häuptlingen zum Sieg verhelfen; alle anderen Familien hingegen haben keine so ausgedehnte Kenntnis. Stundenlang würde er von seinen Ahnen, den gebildeten, sprechen, machte man ihn nicht darauf aufmerksam, daß es einem nicht um das Wissen längst verschiedener Ahnen zu tun ist, sondern um das von ihnen ererbte.

English

He will soon sing the praises of his ancestors: they were the first to know navigation and the stars; they waged war on their voyages and helped the present chiefs to victory; all other families, on the other hand, have no such extensive knowledge. He would talk for hours about his ancestors, the educated ones, if it were not pointed out to him that it is not the knowledge of long-gone ancestors that is important, but the knowledge inherited from them.

A navigational chart from the Marshall Islands, on display at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. It is made of wood, sennit fiber and cowrie shells. From the collection of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Date not known. Photo by Jim Heaphy (CC-BY-SA 3.0).

He continues on page 78

Ich bat ihn [den Häuptling, der selbst fortgeschrittenen Alters war und seine Nachtruhe brauchte] jedoch, die Seefahrer Lowane und Lekoujabue damit zu beauftragen, mir ihr Wissen mitzuteilen. Letzterer kam denn auch abends und selbst in den frühen Morgenstunden. Zu meinem größten Staunen zeigte er 64 Sterne und Sternbilder.

English

However, I asked him [the chief, who was himself advanced in age and needed his night's rest] to commission the sailors Lowane and Lekoujabue to share their knowledge with me. The latter came in the evening and even in the early hours of the morning. To my great amazement, he showed me 64 stars and constellations.

Above his star name list, he writes:

[Es kann für] die Richtigkeit einiger Sternbilder keine volle Garantie übernommen werden[...], da unter den Seefahrern selbst Divergenzen auftreten. Zu verwundern ist, daß manche Sterne erster Größe, wie Sirius, Rigel, keinen Namen haben, wohingegen manche der von den eingeborenen Seefahrern mit einem Namen bedachten Sternbilder aus Sternen vierter bis fünfter Größe zusammengesetzt sind.

English

No full guarantee can be given for the correctness of some constellations since divergences occur among the navigators themselves. Surprisingly, some stars of the first magnitude, such as Sirius and Rigel, have no name, whereas some of the constellations given a name by the native navigators are composed of stars of the fourth to fifth magnitude.

Erdland (1914: 92) also refers to the famous Marshallese stick charts for see navigation.

Mythology

Seen as a spondylus mussel (bake), nearby Debwāāl-eo (stars in Ophiuchus) being a drill used to drill holes in the mussel to make "puka shell" necklaces (Erdland 1914: 83; Abo et al. 2019, under Debwāāl-eo; Johnson et al.)

Erdland reports only four star lores (p. 210-226), three concerning the Pleiades, one concerning Antares.

• Liködaner gibt ihrem Sohne Siebengestirn das erste Segelkanu. (Liködaner gives her son Pleiades the first sailing canoe.)
• Siebengestirns Eifersucht auf Jibuges Weib. (Pleiades's jealousy of Jibuge's wife.)
• Siebengestirn bestraft zwei Leute wegen Verachtung seiner Person. (Pleiades punishes two people for contempt of his person)
• Antares rächt die Untreue seiner Frau. (Antares avenges his wife's infidelity)

IAU Name Discussion

The star name has been proposed to the IAU WGSN since 2021; in 2024 the group discussed to register the name Bake-eo for γ Oph (SIMBAD-link) with Vmag = 3.75 in the IAU-Catalog of Star Names. gam Oph currently lacks a name in SIMBAD. Astrophysically, gam Oph is a bright, nearby (distance ~ 30 parsecs) star that was one of the original A0V spectral type and photometric standard stars that helped define the zero points of the Johnson UBV photometric system (Johnson & Morgan 1953).

We don't know (yet) what map the author was using to ascribe the Marshallese names to stars with Bayer and Flamsteed designations - because some of the names for the stars and asterisms are for quite surprising stars: e.g. "Lerrik ran nejin Jabro" are attributed to the faint pair pi Tau (V=4.7mag) and 71 Tau (V=4.5mag) in the Hyades. Additionally, they have the curious alias "Rediculus" for alpha Pavonis, which seems to be unique to German 19th cen and early 20th cen navigation works (e.g. Stupar 1908).  

Are there alternative cultural names for gam Oph?

gam Oph is part of the Zongzheng asterism from the Shi shi xingjing Star Catalogue.

Aldurajah (Moore & Rees 2011). This is one of dozens of star names that appear in Moore & Rees that appear to have dubious origins. The name obviously sounds Arabic, but it does not appear as a celestial name in any other source that covers either indigenous Arabian or scientific Arabic names that I've seen. Mentions online appear to be mainly over the past decade after the publication of Moore & Rees 2011.

Muliphen (Allen 1899) "but I cannot trace it here, although this title is famous in other parts of the sky". Regardless of the etymology, the name is non-unique and the WGSN already adopted "Muliphein" for gam CMa.

Is the hyphen necessary?

Why not just "Bakeeo" which would ease the lives of astrophysicists? We've not needed hyphens for any of the previous IAU star names. Among ~24,000 IAU names for asteroids, exoplanets, satellites, and stars, they are used sparingly (200 instances or ~0.8%), and all of which are for asteroids - and for proper names where a hyphen was usually used for a modern proper name (e.g., (11274) Castillo-Rogez) or for some modern transliterations of ancient proper names (e.g. (11156) Al-Khwarismi).

However, writing it "Bakeeo" would introduce a lot of confusion. This is not only because it would tempt people to pronounce it "Bak-ee-yew" rather than "Bak-ey-yew" (i.e. putting in a long "ee" sound, which is wrong, as long and short vowels are distinct in many Pacific languages). The double-vowel is an orthographic nightmare anyway owing to its ambiguous use by various ethnographers, sometimes to represent a long "ey" sound (properly transcribed as "ē", as opposed to "ī" which represents the long "ee" sound) and sometimes to represent "e‘e", i.e. two short "ey" sounds separated by a glottal stop, which is incorrectly omitted. Actually, "Bake‘eo" would be closest to the actual pronunciation, but the glottal stop is not used in Marshallese, so that spelling would be misleading. So we are stuck with "Bake-eo".

Yet another idea would be to use the spelling "Bakeyew" as this would reflect the English spelling of the pronunciation. In Arabic transliteration there are also at least two versions of the transliteration: one according to the written letters and one according to the sound in spoken language (cf. "Altair" and "Atair"). However, "Bakeyew" could look like Russian (or other Slavic languages): We checked that there is no Russian meaning of the term.

References

• Johnson, Rubellite, John Mahelona and Clive Ruggles (in press, publication expected in 2026). Nā Inoa Hōkū: Hawaiian and Pacific Star Names, 3rd edn. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.