Eta Aurigae

Nomenclature

η Aurigae (Latinised to Eta Aurigae) is the star's Bayer designation.

Along with Zeta Aurigae it represents one of the kids of the she-goat Capella, from which it derived its Latin traditional name Haedus II or Hoedus II, from the Latin haedus "kid" (Zeta Aurigae was Haedus I). It also had the less common traditional name Mahasim, from the Arabic المِعْصَم al-miʽşam "the wrist" (of the charioteer), which it shared with Theta Aurigae. In 2016, the IAU organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN approved the names Haedus for Eta Aurigae and Saclateni for Zeta Aurigae A on 30 June 2017 and they are both now so included in the List of IAU-approved Star Names.

In Chinese, 柱 (Zhù), meaning Pillars, refers to an asterism consisting of Eta Aurigae, Epsilon Aurigae, Zeta Aurigae, Upsilon Aurigae, Nu Aurigae, Tau Aurigae, Chi Aurigae and 26 Aurigae. Consequently, the Chinese name for Eta Aurigae itself is 柱三 (Zhǔ sān, English: the Third Star of Pillars).