"The Seventh Planet"

Early man discovered that the skies contained seven objects which moved about in the skies, as opposed to the many object which remained in the same relative position night after night. Today, we know these seven objects as

1. The Sun,
2. The Moon,
3. Mercury,
4. Venus,
5. Mars,
6. Jupiter, and
7. Saturn

With the aid of magnification lenses, another object was discovered which moved about in like manner. That object was designated as

"URANUS", the seventh planet from the sun.

All my life, I have called the planet "uRAINus," with the initial "u" barely sounded and the final "us" a quiet after-syllable to the emphasized "RAIN" sound in the middle. I suppose I was in my mid-30's before I heard jokes made about how it was pronounced, and I think that came after I had heard noted astronomer, author and actor Carl Sagan pronounce the name "URINE-us". Then my dear friend Lloyd, the world traveller, asked me "What do the Starship Enterprise and toilet paper have in common?" I didn't know. "They both circle Uranus in search of Klingons."

The first 35 years of my life, it just didn't occur to me that the seventh planet had this identity problem with verbal-aural similarities which evoked thoughts of an anatomical part or of liquid human waste. In fact, the word "anus" was only used with the waste hole in a paramecium, euglena, or other simple lifeform. The comparable word for that part of a human was generally referred to in other ways. Today, I found a website - http://www.nineplanets.org.html which cautioned readers about the pronunciation, to be careful not to cause embarrassment by saying "Your anus" or "Urine us"; the site included a soundbyte so we would all know how to pronounce the name of the seventh planet.

http://www.nineplanets.org/say/uranus.au

This is truly a fine public service. We should all be thankful to the webmaster for including this training information.