‘Woke’ astronomers urge renaming Magellanic Clouds honoring controversial explorer: ‘Violent colonialist legacy’

A coalition of astronomers is pushing to rename the Milky Way’s closest neighboring galaxies, arguing that the Portuguese explorer they are named after was a “murderer” who had nothing to do with their discovery.

The renaming effort for the Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud is being led by Dr. Mia de los Reyes, an assistant professor of astronomy at Amherst College in Massachusetts, who recently published an op-ed in the journal APS Physics laying out the case for the proposed moniker switch.

The beauty of the two well-studied satellite galaxies is “clouded,” de los Reyes argues, by the fact that they are named for Ferdinand Magellan, the 16th-century leader of the first expedition to successfully circumnavigate the globe.

“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,” the scientist wrote.

“We would like the International Astronomical Union — the body in charge of naming astronomical object — to rename the Magellanic Clouds.”

Not only was Magellan “a colonizer, a slaver, and a murderer,” according to the Amherst professor, but more importantly, he was “no astronomer” and was not the first to document the two galaxies, which are visible to the naked eye in the southern night sky.

“Indigenous peoples across the Southern Hemisphere have names and legends for these systems that predate Magellan by thousands of years,” de los Reyes points out. The galaxies were previously known by other monikers, including “Clouds of the Cape” and the more scientific-sounding “Nubecula Minor” and “Nubecula Major.”

A scribe aboard Magellan’s ship described the two groups of stars resembling clouds that he observed on the voyage, and that is how they eventually came to be known as the Magellanic Clouds in the 1800s.

David Hogg, a professor of physics and data science at NYU, agrees that Magellan’s being “murderous and awful” is not the main problem with having his name attached to the galaxies. 

“The primary issue is that the clouds aren’t his discovery,” Hogg told Space.com.

“I can’t imagine how any astronomer could object to the renaming of the clouds, since there is absolutely no sense in which Magellan is in any way responsible for their discovery,” the professor added.

Despite the explorer’s lack of obvious connection to the galaxies, his name appears on more than 17,000 peer-reviewed academic articles, according to de los Reyes.

The slave-owning explorer’s name is also attached to craters on the moon and Mars, which are called Magelhaens; the NASA Magellan spacecraft; the twin 6.5-m Magellan telescopes; and most recently, the cutting-edge Giant Magellan Telescope that is currently being built.

Although Magellan has been celebrated through the ages as a daring explorer who led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East Indies across the Pacific Ocean and discovered the interoceanic passage now called the Strait of Magellan, he was also known to commit horrific acts against some of the native populations he encountered.

A first-hand account of Magellan’s expedition cited in de los Reyes’ essay describes how Magellan and his men enslaved the Tehuelche people in what is now Argentina.

“He placed iron manacles on the ‘youngest and best proportioned’ men, telling them that the manacles were gifts,” the astronomer recounts. “In what became Guam and the Philippines, Magellan and his men burned villages and killed their inhabitants.”

De los Reyes, who is Filipina-American, notes that many people in the Philippines consider Magellan a “villain” — and celebrate as a hero a local ruler called Lapu-Lapu whose forces killed the explorer during a battle on the island of Mactan in 1521.

“Naming objects, buildings, and places after people has long been a way for society to honor individuals for their discoveries, their accomplishments, or the values they symbolize,” according to de los Reyes. “Magellan made no astronomical discoveries, and for many, he continues to be a symbol of imperialist and anti-Indigenous violence.”

Some 50 astronomers have already signed onto de los Reyes’ renaming campaign, and a further 50 have expressed an interest in it, reported Science News.

“Pretty much every astronomer I’ve talked to is supportive; criticisms seem to be primarily from a vocal minority of the general public,” de los Reyes told Space.com. “I’ve gotten a few emails from folks — who don’t appear to be astronomers — telling me to ‘go back to doing science,’ or that this is ‘woke-ism’ — that kind of thing.”

The goal is to bring the name change proposal before the International Astronomic Union and hold a vote on it.

Several alternative names for the galaxies have been bandied about, including “Meridional ” and “Milky,” which would allow astronomers to continue using the popular acronymic LMC and SMC.

De los Reyes’ renaming proposal echoes a failed effort to have the name of the James Webb Space Telescope changed.

A group of scientists for years claimed that James Webb, a former NASA official, oversaw the firing of LGTBQ+ employees as part of what became known as the “Lavender Scare” — but an internal investigation found that Webb played no role in persecuting workers based on their sexual orientation.

In recent years, names of geographic locations, buildings, military installations and even holidays honoring objectional historical figures have been on the chopping block.

Earlier this week, the American Ornithological Society, which is responsible for standardizing English bird names across the Americas, announced a plan to rechristen some 80 bird species named after people as part of a campaign to do away with monikers “clouded by racism and misogyny.”