Celebrities commonly change their names on the path to stardom.
Elton John began life as Reginald Kenneth Dwight, John Denver as
Henry Deutschendorf, Jr, and Bela Lugosi as Be’la Ferenc Dezso
Blasko. A name change can make someone more marketable in the
fickle entertainment industry. However, once someone makes it
big, their name usually stays the same (excepting P-Diddy and
Prince, whose constant name changes became marketing strategies
in themselves). A celebrity’s name becomes the branding that
represents and sells their fame. What about name changes for
scientific celebrities? I’m not talking about people, but rather
the components of nature that we observe around ourselves and
adorn with nomenclature. There was (unnecessary) public uproar
when Pluto was re-designated as a Kuiper Belt planetoid. Neil
deGrasse Tyson even got hate mail from children when the
American Museum of Natural History updated its displays
accordingly. The change was the result of a non-unanimous
scientific consensus attempting to be