Krosuri Veera Raghava Chary of Andhra Pradesh, India, was both a space-lover and a devoted communist highly opposed to India’s caste system.
So he gave all five of his children, born from the 1960s to the 1980s, space-themed names that were so unconventional that they made it impossible to determine the family’s caste.
Here they are, in order:
- Spaceship (boy), named after the USSR’s first Soyuz spacecraft, launched in 1966.
- Viking-II (girl), named after the NASA spacecraft Viking 2, launched in 1975.
- Fusion (boy), whose name may have been inspired by the fact that “stars are powered by nuclear fusion in their cores.”
- Space Shuttle (boy), named after NASA’s Space Shuttle system, which began with test flights in 1981.
- Space Shuttle later named one of his children, a boy, Space Shuttle Bulldozer.
- Space Shuttle Challenger (boy), named after NASA’s ill-fated Space Shuttle Challenger, launched in 1986.
Chary also named two of his grandchildren, Quasar and Sagan.
The Chary family reminds me of the Subatomic Particle Siblings. Its also reminds me of the babies named Skylab, Sputnik, and Antares.
Related question: What do you think the first space baby should be named?
Source: Samdani, MN. “To beat caste system, Communist leader named his children after spaceships, celestial bodies.” Times of India Sep. 19, 2015.