2 Pallas - Name

Name

2 Pallas is named after Pallas Athena, an alternate name for the goddess Athena. In some mythologies Athena killed Pallas, then adopted her friend's name out of mourning. (There are several male characters of the same name in Greek mythology, but the first asteroids were invariably given female names.)

The stony-iron Pallasite meteorites are not connected to the Pallas asteroid, being instead named after the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas. The chemical element palladium, on the other hand, was named after the asteroid, which had been discovered just before the element.

As with other asteroids, the astronomical symbol for Pallas is a disk with its discovery number, ②. However, it also has an older, more iconic symbol, ⚴ ( or sometimes ).