I had thought there were two pronunciations of Uranus. My husband, still capable of distinguishing the anatomical from the planetary, puts the stress on the first syllable.
The question arose because Lord Bragg on his radio oasis of sense In Our Time was discussing William Herschel, in 1781 the first man to discover a planet.
Herschel at first called it Georgium Sidus, the ‘Georgian planet’. This was to thank his patron George III, who allowed him £200 a year to live near Windsor and show guests the sky’s wonders with the 7ft reflector telescope he had polished into existence, the best in the world.
The Georgian name did not catch on among European astronomers. In France Jérôme de Lalande called it Herschel and Louis Poinsinet de Sivry tried Cybele (the Great Mother). The Swede Erik Prosperin suggested Neptune, eventually given to the planet first seen by telescope in 1846.
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