12 Victoria

Naming and controversy

Hind chose to name the newly-discovered asteroid after the deity Victoria from ancient Roman religion. Victoria, daughter of the Titan Pallas, was the Roman personification of victory. The chosen name also honoured then-reigning Queen Victoria,^[10]: 14 though indirectly.^[11] Prior asteroids' names, while mythological in nature, were chosen to link the asteroid to the nationality of its discoverer (such as Parthenope and Egeria for Annibale de Gasparis's discoveries).^[12] Hind nevertheless sought his fellow astronomers' approval for the name on mythological grounds, stating that it was not exclusively chosen for its relation to the queen.^[13]

Despite Hind's rationale, American astronomers objected to the name due to its coincidence with a reigning sovereign,^[14]: 203 starting a long controversy over the asteroid nomenclature practices that would later involve many other minor planets.^{[10]: 4, 14} Benjamin A. Gould, editor of The Astronomical Journal, wrote of Hind's choice of naming:

Such nomenclature is at variance with established usage, and liable to the objections which have very properly led astronomers to reject the names "Medicean Stars," "Georgium Sidus," "Ceres Ferdinanden," &c., and even those of the astronomers Herschel and Le Verrier, for the adoption of whose names some arguments might be adduced.

In response to Gould's objections, Hind proposed Clio as an alternative.^[13] American astronomers adopted Clio, using it in place of Victoria in journal publications—to the frustration of British astronomer George B. Airy.^[14]: 203 William C. Bond nevertheless affirmed that the name Victoria fulfilled the conditions for mythological nomenclature, an opinion that was supported by a majority of astronomers.^[10]: 14 Some reference works continued using Clio in place of Victoria for some time;^[17]: 8 The Astronomical Journal labelled the asteroid as Clio until at least 1853,^[18] as did the textbook High-School Astronomy in 1872.^[17]: 34 The name Clio would eventually be reused for the 84th asteroid, 84 Klio, in 1865.^[14]: 204

Symbol

In his announcement of Victoria's discovery, Hind described his chosen symbol as "a star and a laurel branch, emblematic of the Goddess of Victory".^[6] Several variants of the symbol developed, such as one with a two-branch laurel wreath symbolizing victory () and one with a laurel wreath and a figure resembling a flag.^{[17]: 7, 26} In the 1864 edition of Webster's Dictionary, the wreath was drawn as a simple arc around a central star ().^[17]: 7 The two-branched variant was encoded in Unicode 17.0 as U+1CEC5 (𜻅).^{[17]: 2 [19]}