One doesn't get to name many things. A baby here and there. Maybe a pet. That's pretty much it.

So we give it a lot of thought. We want to make the name count. We argue with our loved ones about the selection. We toss and turn at night, thinking, does this work? Will this one be better? And, most importantly, is there any way this can be twisted into a cruel joke?

We're not sure if William Herschel thought of any of those things when he became the first man to discover a planet with the aid of a telescope. In fact, he named his discovery Georgium Sidus (George's Star), after King George III of England. (In case you are wondering what he is doing on our website, his father was rumored to be Jewish. Herschel's, not King George's.)

But Herschel was overruled, the name deemed too British. So German astronomer Johann Elert Bode (Not a Jew), who determined the planet's orbit, proposed a different moniker, one that stuck.

That name?

Uranus.

Perhaps they didn't give it enough thought.