Uwingu or Uwingdon’t
On Mars, there are hundreds of thousands of craters, with less than 1% having a name associated with them (see for yourself via Mars Portal). In 2014, however, a company called Uwingu set out to change that. Founded by Dr. Alan Stern with the purpose of giving names to un-named craters, Uwingu quickly crowdsourced thousands of additional names. This was done by allowing the public to nominate personally meaningful names to crater features of their choice by exploring a web map of the Martian surface.
This was beneficial in three ways. FIRST, it designated place names for vast swaths of the planet where few, if any, existed, creating new information for cartographers and researchers down the road. SECOND, it built a bridge of participation between two distinct groups of society. Instantly thousands of everyday people had buy-in into a domain of science that has mostly been the sandbox of scientists, researchers, and space agencies. THIRD, the funding generated through this exercise was given to various recipients via the Uwingu Grant Fund to promote space exploration, education, and research. Recipients included Astronomers Without Borders, The Galileo Teacher Training Program, SEDS, Allen Telescope Array, International Dark-Sky Association, and Explore Mars.
We all participate in place naming.
Our species has been naming places for as long as we’ve had the ability to speak. The earliest recorded written named place is from Egypt dated to the fourth millennium B.C. It is a sign inscribed on the side of a boulder that reads “Domain of the Horus King Scorpion”. Other place names have persisted throughout history via maps, language, music, and other mediums of information conveyance. Even when places are given new names the old one lingers, and many places have multiple concurrent names that are used interchangeably without a second thought.
Of course, Uwingu is not the official naming authority of planetary places. That title goes to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which has yet to recognize the named places captured by Uwingu. Prior to Uwingu the IAU had designated a mere 1800 named places on Mars over the past century. After Uwingu’s three years of operation, that number jumped to well over 22,000.
The naming of place has a long history behind it and is not likely to abide by any group’s particular naming conventions or preferences. Once created, names have a habit of sticking around, almost indefinitely. Copies of the Uwingu place-name data exist in at least three repositories, Uwingu, MarsOne (a Uwingu partner), and RedMapper. Regardless of the official position of the IAU, Uwingu’s names are here to stay. This is the nature of place-naming.