"Nico Mody-Nikoloff" nico@farsight.co.nz wrote:

Helen Krummenacker wrote:

...

I'm amazed at how often I see Delta everywhere. There are Delta Growers (fresh green beans etc) the Delta Queen paddle steamer on the Waikato river, Delta Transport etc. It seems a popular letter for some reason. You don't see mu, iota or epsilon used much.

That would be because in several of these references, if not all of them they refer not to a letter but a geographical feature-- i.e. where a river spreads out forming a delta... which a paddle streamer would naturally travel through, agriculture is often found, etc. I do believe this is derived from the letter d delta, which was a triangular shape, because the river makes triangular shapes at its delta. But the Delta Queen was not named as the fourth in its series after the Alpha Queen etc.

Or am I missing the fact that you were joking?

Well, sort of, but the examples I gave were real. I realise that the Delta Queen harks back to the Mississippi paddle-steamers as the Waikato doesn't have a huge delta. This geographical feature doesn't explain the others like Delta Software or my favourite, Delta Hypnotherapy. And there were 3 times as many Alphas, but I guess that stands for number one. I didn't look up Omegas. Hmm, just did - 19, 4 of them with Alpha in the name as well. Greek letters seem to be popular all round.

Nico

Slightly changing the subject- would Gauda Prime and Cygnus Alpha have been the first planet settled in their respective systems? Would