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A tight little cluster of young stars in the shoulder of Taurus is not the brightest thing in the sky. It may be the most named.

Four Names, One Cluster

In the older Vedic reckoning the Pleiades are Krittika, the first of the lunar mansions that divide the sky, the point the whole system counts from. In pre Islamic Arabia they are Al Thurayya, the many little ones, the centre of the anwa system that read the rain seasons from the stars. In Maori New Zealand they are Matariki, whose dawn rising in midwinter opens the year itself, still marked today. Japanese tradition simply calls the cluster Subaru, the gathered ones, a name a car company later borrowed for its badge of six joined stars.

Why the Same Cluster Keeps Getting Chosen

The atlas records a small set of links between a calendar system and the single star or cluster it counts its year from. Most such links point at a different star for each system. This one does not: three of the atlas's five recorded links of this kind point at the Pleiades, from three calendar traditions with no line of descent connecting them. That the counting so often lands on the same small smudge of light says something about how visible it is on the horizon at exactly the times a farmer or a sailor needs a marker, wherever on earth they happen to be standing.

Where To Read More

• PleiadesShared SkyThe cluster itself, named four times over by traditions that never met
• KrittikaAgniThe Vedic lunar mansion the calendar counts from, identified with the Pleiades
• Al-ThurayyaArabic SkyThe Arabic name at the centre of the pre Islamic rain star calendar
• MatarikiPolynesian SkyThe Maori name whose dawn rising still opens the year at Matariki