The name Arrokoth was chosen by the New Horizons team to represent the Powhatan people indigenous to the Tidewater region of Virginia and Maryland in the eastern United States, and formally announced with the permission of the Powhatan nation’s Pamunkey Indian Tribe elders.
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Name origin: Centaur in Greek myth. Along with fellow centaurs, Ekheklos attended the Lapith king Pirithous’ wedding and was killed by Ampyx, who had thrust his lance that lacked its point into Ekheklos’ face. Name may mean ‘sticky’ or ‘glutinous’.
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Name origin: Jack B. Child (b. 1951), software engineer at JPL and Asteroid Project director of the World Space Foundation; honoured for his “generous helpfulness” and for introducing team members to the Palomar project.
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Stateira was a queen of ancient Persia who died about 400 BCE; wife of Artaxerxes II. She had a son, who became Artaxerxes III. She was a popular ruler, apparently because she talked to ordinary people, but did not get on well with her mother-in-law Parysatis, who eventually poisoned her.
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Germanic goddess associated with water and wagons. Only priests were allowed to touch the cart of Nerthus, which was kept in a sacred grove on an island. When the priest found her to be present by the cart, it was drawn on procession; everywhere it went celebrations took place.
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Olympia, officially Archaia Olympia, was a Panhellenic religious sanctuary in ancient Greece, where the early Olympic Games were held from the 8th century BCE to the 4th century CE, before being restored in 1894. The games were held in the name of Zeus, and drew visitors from the entire Greek world
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Veritas is the name given to the Roman virtue of truthfulness, considered one of the main qualities any good Roman should possess, and the Goddess of Truth, daughter of Saturn. The Greek equivalent is Aletheia.
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Name origin: Roman personification of prudence. Prudentia, whose attributes are a mirror and a snake, is frequently depicted as a pair with Justitia, the Roman goddess of Justice. The word “prudence” derives from the Latin prudentia meaning “foresight, sagacity”.
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Siegen is a university city in the Arnsberg region of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It lies in the basin of the river Sieg, and is surrounded by mountains, which where uninhabited are covered in coppice. Siegen lies on the German-Dutch holiday road called the Orange Route, joining towns, cities and regions associated with the House of Orange.
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Name origin: Bavaria, a state in the south-east of Germany and the largest by land area. Its capital city is Munich. The region has been inhabited since the Paleolithic era, with Celtic tribes such the Boii being the first recorded settlers of the Bavarian Alps.
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