<p>There are many of them, e.g. Jimi Hendrix, Maria Callas, Frank Zappa, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Mark Knopfler, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Enrico Caruso, Paul McCartney, Jacques Brel, Bob Dylan, Niccolò Paganini.</p>

<p>If Wikipedia has an entry for the asteroid you might get it by Wikidata (SPARQL) queries. E.g. <a href="https://query.wikidata.org/#%0ASELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FnamedAfter%20%3FnamedAfterLabel%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ3863%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP138%20%3FnamedAfter.%0A%20%20%3FnamedAfter%20wdt%3AP106%20wd%3AQ639669.%20%23%20musician%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%7D" rel="nofollow noreferrer">musicians - Q639669</a>, <a href="https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FnamedAfter%20%3FnamedAfterLabel%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ3863%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP138%20%3FnamedAfter.%0A%20%20%3FnamedAfter%20wdt%3AP106%20wd%3AQ177220.%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%7D%0A" rel="nofollow noreferrer">singers - Q177220</a>, or <a href="https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FnamedAfter%20%3FnamedAfterLabel%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ3863%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP138%20%3FnamedAfter.%0A%20%20%3FnamedAfter%20wdt%3AP106%20wd%3AQ855091.%20%23guitarist%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%7D" rel="nofollow noreferrer">guitarists - Q855091</a>.</p>

<p>However, as not every asteroid has a complete Wikidata entry, these lists will not be exhaustive.</p>

<hr>

<p>Edit:
<a href="https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20DISTINCT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FnamedAfter%20%3FnamedAfterLabel%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ3863.%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP138%20%3FnamedAfter.%0A%20%20%3FnamedAfter%20wdt%3AP106%20%3Foccupation.%0A%20%20%3Foccupation%20wdt%3AP279%20wd%3AQ639669.%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%7D" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Here</a> is a query that selects all asteroids named after a person that is a subclass of musician (currently 288).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-06T22:59:33.707Z
Wow, this is an excellent answer, *thank you!* I tried adding date of birth after 1850 but instantly got lost and confused. https://i.sstatic.net/IVjMx.png I'll try reading the [user manual](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikidata_Query_Service/User_Manual) now, wish me luck!
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-07T23:26:42.060Z
You can query the `date of birth` property and the filter for the desired date. E.g. see https://bit.ly/2HhTKAY
aventurin
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-03T21:43:57.030Z
2019-03-06T21:12:49.443Z
2019-03-06T21:12:49.443Z
aventurin
<p>I don't think you can do better than search the wikipedia pages, where there is a list <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_planets_named_after_people" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_planets_named_after_people</a>. Or you can search yourself through <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanings_of_minor_planet_names" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanings_of_minor_planet_names</a>, if you don't trust wikipedian's curation</p>

<p>But you may need to be quite subtle about how you search, since searching for "music" won't find those that are described as "composers", nor those who are "sopranos", or "violinists" and so forth.  There are also edge cases. William Herschel (who may have coined the name "asteroid") was also a classical composer of note. Or "644 Cosima", named after Wagner's second wife.  How about 1683 Castafiore, named for a fictional "musician"?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-02T16:34:14.037Z
wow! I didn't know that Wikipedia would support such a nice database. It's optimized for clickability, I'm not sure how to go about automating a search of it without building a web crawler. I wonder if all that exists as a downloadable text file, JSON, or similar.
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-02T23:52:07.010Z
That's even better.  I've put it into the answer.
James K
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-03T04:35:45.400Z
@uhoh There's a Wikimedia [API](https://mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page), but it's a pain to use directly on tables, IIRC, since you get the table data in HTML form, rather than in nice JSON. I suppose there's code that makes it simpler in the various Python libraries mentioned [here](https://mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Client_code#Python), and I guess doing a search for "Wikipedia Python tables" could be useful too.
PM 2Ring
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-02T16:29:59.003Z
2019-03-02T23:51:46.120Z
2019-03-02T23:51:46.120Z
James K
<p>Searching for asteroids named after musicians in Wikidata yields <a href="https://w.wiki/89V" rel="nofollow noreferrer">427 results</a> and the list is likely to be still incomplete. This is similar to Aventurin's answer but I also included "musician" as occupation and not just subclasses of it, so this query gets more results (currently 427 vs 318) - hopefully not caused by duplications.</p>

<p>The query is <a href="https://query.wikidata.org/#%23%20Asteroids%20named%20after%20musicians%0ASELECT%20DISTINCT%20%3Fasteroid%20%3FasteroidLabel%20%3FnamedafterLabel%0AWHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fasteroid%20wdt%3AP31%2Fwdt%3AP279%2A%20wd%3AQ3863.%20%20%0A%20%20%3Fasteroid%20wdt%3AP138%20%3Fnamedafter%20.%0A%20%20%3Fnamedafter%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ5%20.%0A%20%20%3Fnamedafter%20wdt%3AP106%2Fwdt%3AP279%2A%20wd%3AQ639669%20.%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22%5BAUTO_LANGUAGE%5D%2Cen%22.%20%7D%0A%7D" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> just in case somebody wants to check it or play with it.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-10T10:12:13.117Z
Wow, thanks! Music of the spheres...
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-10T09:39:04.907Z
2019-09-10T09:46:12.603Z
2019-09-10T09:46:12.603Z
Pere
<p>Spot checking Wikipedia, Google and JPL's <a href="https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Horizions</a> I found several musicians right away, including Lou Reed, Elvis, Freddy Mercury, and David Bowie.</p>

<p>Is there a way to find all of the asteroids that are named after musicians somehow? Or at least most of them? If there's not a compiled list, at least something for which an automated search for "music" or "musician" or related terms can be done?</p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/UVJLV.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/UVJLV.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/ZWjP3.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/ZWjP3.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/wf3hH.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/wf3hH.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/2lcWo.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/2lcWo.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-02T14:35:49.400Z
possibly helpful: https://www.iau.org/public/themes/naming/#minorplanets
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-02T16:12:12.347Z
How would you categorise 2000 Herschel.  Is it for Caroline or William? Is it for William as Astronomer or William as Composer.
James K
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-02T16:30:41.710Z
@JamesK As astronomers, Caroline or William Herschel's lives are really intriguing to me. Not sure how one would pursue formulating a search yet, I suppose it would require some curation. For the purposes of this question though, I just need to hook up names and some biographical connection so I can start learning how to do the search.
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-03T04:20:39.580Z
Do you want to include songwriters, like early rock n roll legend, Phil [Spector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanings_of_minor_planet_names:_18001%E2%80%9319000#132)? And you can't mention Freddy without also mentioning Queen's guitarist (and songwriter) [Brian May](https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=52665#content), who is also an astrophysicist.
PM 2Ring
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-03T04:33:57.220Z
@PM2Ring yes, final curation (who's in, who's out?) would be a bit subjective. Thanks for the links! I didn't know about those two's asteroids. I've mentioned Brian May's discussion of asteroid Freddiemercury [here](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/28734/7982) and [here](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/q/28736/7982) in the past, how thoughtful of him not to plug his own asteroid in the process!
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-03T04:41:08.043Z
@PM2Ring I've referenced Brian May's new song and video in [Did New Horizons use its smaller medium-gain antenna for most/all downlinking of Pluto and Ultima Thule flyby data?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/33337/12102) and in [Was New Horizons launched on a copper rocket?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/33242/12102) as well. I've even [had a question answered](https://space.meta.stackexchange.com/q/868/12102) by someone with an asteroid named after them ;-)
uhoh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-03T04:44:22.997Z
You can watch the video at those questions but not here, at least not yet. That might change in the future if there is much more [Interest in looking into adding the YouTube viewer?](https://astronomy.meta.stackexchange.com/q/482/7982)
uhoh
<asteroids><naming>
How many asteroids are named after musicians? Is there a searchable list for this?
uhoh
# How many asteroids are named after musicians? Is there a searchable list for this?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-03-02)

Spot checking Wikipedia, Google and JPL's [Horizions](https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi) I found several musicians right away, including Lou Reed, Elvis, Freddy Mercury, and David Bowie.

Is there a way to find all of the asteroids that are named after musicians somehow? Or at least most of them? If there's not a compiled list, at least something for which an automated search for "music" or "musician" or related terms can be done?

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/UVJLV.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/UVJLV.png)

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/ZWjP3.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/ZWjP3.png)

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/wf3hH.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/wf3hH.png)

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/2lcWo.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/2lcWo.png)

**Tags:** asteroids, naming

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: possibly helpful: https://www.iau.org/public/themes/naming/#minorplanets  
> **username_1**: How would you categorise 2000 Herschel.  Is it for Caroline or William? Is it for William as Astronomer or William as Composer.  
> **username_0**: @JamesK As astronomers, Caroline or William Herschel's lives are really intriguing to me. Not sure how one would pursue formulating a search yet, I suppose it would require some curation. For the purposes of this question though, I just need to hook up names and some biographical connection so I can start learning how to do the search.  
> **username_2**: Do you want to include songwriters, like early rock n roll legend, Phil [Spector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanings_of_minor_planet_names:_18001%E2%80%9319000#132)? And you can't mention Freddy without also mentioning Queen's guitarist (and songwriter) [Brian May](https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=52665#content), who is also an astrophysicist.  
> **username_0**: @PM2Ring yes, final curation (who's in, who's out?) would be a bit subjective. Thanks for the links! I didn't know about those two's asteroids. I've mentioned Brian May's discussion of asteroid Freddiemercury [here](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/28734/7982) and [here](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/q/28736/7982) in the past, how thoughtful of him not to plug his own asteroid in the process!  
> **username_0**: @PM2Ring I've referenced Brian May's new song and video in [Did New Horizons use its smaller medium-gain antenna for most/all downlinking of Pluto and Ultima Thule flyby data?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/33337/12102) and in [Was New Horizons launched on a copper rocket?](https://space.stackexchange.com/q/33242/12102) as well. I've even [had a question answered](https://space.meta.stackexchange.com/q/868/12102) by someone with an asteroid named after them ;-)  
> **username_0**: You can watch the video at those questions but not here, at least not yet. That might change in the future if there is much more [Interest in looking into adding the YouTube viewer?](https://astronomy.meta.stackexchange.com/q/482/7982)  

---

## 3 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2019-03-03. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

There are many of them, e.g. Jimi Hendrix, Maria Callas, Frank Zappa, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Mark Knopfler, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Enrico Caruso, Paul McCartney, Jacques Brel, Bob Dylan, Niccolò Paganini.

If Wikipedia has an entry for the asteroid you might get it by Wikidata (SPARQL) queries. E.g. [musicians - Q639669](https://query.wikidata.org/#%0ASELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FnamedAfter%20%3FnamedAfterLabel%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ3863%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP138%20%3FnamedAfter.%0A%20%20%3FnamedAfter%20wdt%3AP106%20wd%3AQ639669.%20%23%20musician%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%7D), [singers - Q177220](https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FnamedAfter%20%3FnamedAfterLabel%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ3863%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP138%20%3FnamedAfter.%0A%20%20%3FnamedAfter%20wdt%3AP106%20wd%3AQ177220.%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%7D%0A), or [guitarists - Q855091](https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FnamedAfter%20%3FnamedAfterLabel%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ3863%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20wdt%3AP138%20%3FnamedAfter.%0A%20%20%3FnamedAfter%20wdt%3AP106%20wd%3AQ855091.%20%23guitarist%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%7D).

However, as not every asteroid has a complete Wikidata entry, these lists will not be exhaustive.

---

Edit:
[Here](https://query.wikidata.org/#SELECT%20DISTINCT%20%3Fitem%20%3FitemLabel%20%3FnamedAfter%20%3FnamedAfterLabel%20WHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ3863.%0A%20%20%3Fitem%20wdt%3AP138%20%3FnamedAfter.%0A%20%20%3FnamedAfter%20wdt%3AP106%20%3Foccupation.%0A%20%20%3Foccupation%20wdt%3AP279%20wd%3AQ639669.%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22en%22.%20%7D%0A%7D) is a query that selects all asteroids named after a person that is a subclass of musician (currently 288).

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Wow, this is an excellent answer, *thank you!* I tried adding date of birth after 1850 but instantly got lost and confused. https://i.sstatic.net/IVjMx.png I'll try reading the [user manual](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikidata_Query_Service/User_Manual) now, wish me luck!  
> **username_3**: You can query the `date of birth` property and the filter for the desired date. E.g. see https://bit.ly/2HhTKAY  

---

### Answer by username_1 on 2019-03-02. Score: 3

I don't think you can do better than search the wikipedia pages, where there is a list <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_planets_named_after_people>. Or you can search yourself through <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanings_of_minor_planet_names>, if you don't trust wikipedian's curation

But you may need to be quite subtle about how you search, since searching for "music" won't find those that are described as "composers", nor those who are "sopranos", or "violinists" and so forth. There are also edge cases. William Herschel (who may have coined the name "asteroid") was also a classical composer of note. Or "644 Cosima", named after Wagner's second wife. How about 1683 Castafiore, named for a fictional "musician"?

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: wow! I didn't know that Wikipedia would support such a nice database. It's optimized for clickability, I'm not sure how to go about automating a search of it without building a web crawler. I wonder if all that exists as a downloadable text file, JSON, or similar.  
> **username_1**: That's even better.  I've put it into the answer.  
> **username_2**: @username_0 There's a Wikimedia [API](https://mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page), but it's a pain to use directly on tables, IIRC, since you get the table data in HTML form, rather than in nice JSON. I suppose there's code that makes it simpler in the various Python libraries mentioned [here](https://mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Client_code#Python), and I guess doing a search for "Wikipedia Python tables" could be useful too.  

---

### Answer by username_4 on 2019-09-10. Score: 2

Searching for asteroids named after musicians in Wikidata yields [427 results](https://w.wiki/89V) and the list is likely to be still incomplete. This is similar to Aventurin's answer but I also included "musician" as occupation and not just subclasses of it, so this query gets more results (currently 427 vs 318) - hopefully not caused by duplications.

The query is [here](https://query.wikidata.org/#%23%20Asteroids%20named%20after%20musicians%0ASELECT%20DISTINCT%20%3Fasteroid%20%3FasteroidLabel%20%3FnamedafterLabel%0AWHERE%20%7B%0A%20%20%3Fasteroid%20wdt%3AP31%2Fwdt%3AP279%2A%20wd%3AQ3863.%20%20%0A%20%20%3Fasteroid%20wdt%3AP138%20%3Fnamedafter%20.%0A%20%20%3Fnamedafter%20wdt%3AP31%20wd%3AQ5%20.%0A%20%20%3Fnamedafter%20wdt%3AP106%2Fwdt%3AP279%2A%20wd%3AQ639669%20.%0A%20%20SERVICE%20wikibase%3Alabel%20%7B%20bd%3AserviceParam%20wikibase%3Alanguage%20%22%5BAUTO_LANGUAGE%5D%2Cen%22.%20%7D%0A%7D) just in case somebody wants to check it or play with it.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Wow, thanks! Music of the spheres...  

---

