Stars named after gods.

[llozymandias]

I had two main objections to calling krypton's sun Rao.  The first was that none of the actual stories referred to it by that name.  The second was that i thought it was weird for the kryptonians to name their sun after God.  Rao being (since Jaf-El's time) kryptonese for God.  Of course i was already aware that Rao was originally the name of a sun-god.  And there is our sun's name of Sol, the name of an ancient roman sun-god.  Maybe in more modern times naming their sun Rao would have been the kryptonians saying that their sun is Rao/Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah/God's chosen star.  For his chosen people, the kryptonians.  At least that is most likely what their religion told them.  Well that kills my second objection.  As for the first one, point out any story where modern kryptonians called their sun Rao.

[lonewolf23k]

Well, my opinion on the matter is simple: They started calling their sun Rao at first out of religious superstition..

...then, as they grew more scientifically aware, they kept the name out of tradition, even though they knew Rao was really a ball of firey nuclear plasma rather then a supernatural being.

Much for the same reason we've the names for the Sun and the Planets, even though we know what they really are now.  We've kept them out of tradition, and because it's simpler then coming up with whole new names.

[Super Monkey]

Even the days of the week and our months are named after gods and came forth from pagan religions.

Sunday = Sun
Monday = Moon  this is more oblivious in romance languages
Tuesday = Tyr  the son of Odin for english, Mars in romance languages
Wednesday = Woden/Odin for english, Mercury in romance languages
Thursday = Thor for english, Jove in romance languages
Friday = Frigga for english, Venus in romance languages
Saturday = Saturn for both

January = Janus god
February = februo it means to purify
March = Mars god
April = aperire It means to open
May =  Maia god
June = Juno god
July = Julius Caesar
August = Caesar Augustus

Then it gets boring with the modern names and months:

September = seven 7
October = octo 8
November =  nine 9
December = dec  10

[Great Rao]

Thursday = Thor for english

I wonder if Marvel Comics is making any money off this deal.  Speaking of which, this week I made an impulse buy of the latest issue of the "Thor: Blood Oath" miniseries.  The thing literally has 30 pages of ads (not including the additional 3 ads on the inside cover, inside back cover, and back cover - a total of 33) compared to only 22 pages of story.  I was dumbfounded.

[Captain Kal]

FYI

In Zoroastrianism, where many later religions derived their final conflict of good vs evil, Ahuru-Mazda is the sun and a god.

I believe originally in the Egyptian pantheon, Amon-Ra was the actual sun and not just a god of the sun.  Similarly, Nut was the actual sky/heavens, Jeb was the actual Earth.

It was similar pattern in developing religions to have animistic spirits inhabiting everything, then gods were consolidated to specific things, then gods were later separated from the objects they controlled.  Monotheism tends to come after that.

Seeing as Kryptonians have our same psychology based on the stories, it makes sense that their religious development would have similar patterns to ours.  And this was demonstrated in The Krypton Chronicles where Erok-El described Rao as the sun itself in the earliest recorded reference to this.  Bronze Age or not, this reference does exist and is in agreement with human religious development.