For centuries Ferdinand Magellan has been accorded a rare privilege. The explorer’s name has been written in the stars. Two satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way, which sparkle conspicuously over the southern hemisphere, are labelled the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
Now astronomers want to erase this celestial distinction. They say that Magellan, the 16th century Portuguese sailor, was a murderer who enslaved and burned down the homes of Indigenous peoples during his leadership of the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe. They insist his name should no longer be honoured by being associated with the clouds.
“Magellan committed horrific acts. In what became Guam and the Philippines, he and his men burned villages and killed their inhabitants,” says the astronomer Mia de los Reyes, of Amherst College in Massachusetts. Magellan led the 1519 Spanish expedition that achieved the first European navigation to Asia via the Pacific, but died in a battle, in 1521, with Indigenous people in the present-day Philippines.
In an article in the journal APS Physics, Reyes calls for the International Astronomical Union – the body in charge of naming astronomical objects – to rename the Magellanic Clouds. “I and many other astronomers believe that astronomical objects and facilities should not be named after Magellan, or after anyone else with a violent colonialist legacy.”
It is not just Magellan’s actions that should lead to his name being stripped from the skies, argues Prof David Hogg, of New York University. “The primary issue is that the clouds aren’t his discovery,” he has told the website Space.com.
Indigenous people across the southern hemisphere could clearly see these objects and had their own names for them. In fact, it was not until the late 19th century that they were named after the explorer.
“When we uphold the names of people, such as Magellan, whose lives and legacies have actively caused harm, we alienate the communities who have been harmed,” adds Reyes.
The call for change is the latest battle in a growing revolution in nomenclature in which researchers are demanding changes be given to scientific names now considered objectionable. As the Observer revealed last week, these include species that have been named after Hitler and Mussolini, labels that many scientists believe should no longer be permitted. As a result, they are pressing for taxonomic organisations to allow alterations to be made to names deemed offensive.
It is unclear what alternative names could be given to Magellanic Clouds. Milky Clouds has been put forward as one suggestion.
But where would this process stop? The explorer has also lent his names to the twin 6.5-m Magellan telescopes and the upcoming Giant Magellan Telescope, all based in Chile. Reyes is also pressing for their renaming.
In addition, one of the planet’s most distinctive bodies of water is named after the explorer but is it likely that the Magellan Straits would be given a new name?
In future, greater care will have to be taken in naming stars or species, say scientists, with many arguing these should no longer recall individuals. They point to Nasa’s Mars robot rovers – Curiosity, Perseverance and Spirit – which instead honour ideals.
