Bake-eo

A Marshallese star name for γ Oph. Pronounced "bakey-yew".

Etymology and History

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).

[!!!] spondylus mussel in whose disk Debwāāl-eo ("the drill") (67, 68 and 70 Oph) is used to drill holes to make "puka shell" necklaces

Mythology

Seen as a Spondylus mussel (bake), nearby Debwāāl-eo (stars in Hydra or Ophiuchus) being a drill used to drill holes in the mussel to make necklaces [Erdland 1914: 83; Abo et al. 2019, under Debwāāl-eo].

References

• Abo, Takaji, Byron W. Bender, Alfred Capelle, and Tony DeBrum (2019). Marshallese-English Online Dictionary. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. https://ling.lll.hawaii.edu/dicts/MOD/.
• Erdland, P. August (1914). Die Marshall-Insulaner. Münster i.W.: Aschendorff (Bibliothèque-anthropos, 2(1)).
• 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.