Saturn's name and symbol ♄

Updated October 19, 2026 · 5 min read

Saturn is named after Saturnus, the Roman god of agriculture and of a lost golden age, whom the Romans identified with the Greek Titan Cronus (Kronos). The Greeks had earlier called the planet Phainon, "the shining one", before linking it to Kronos; the Romans translated that link into their own god. Its astronomical symbol, ♄, is usually described as a stylized sickle or scythe, Saturn's attribute, but papyrus evidence suggests it began as an abbreviation of the Greek name Kronos.

From Phainon to Saturn

Saturn is the most distant planet easily visible to the naked eye, and it has been watched since antiquity. Babylonian astronomers tracked it carefully and associated it with the god Ninurta; their records of its slow motion through the zodiac are among the oldest systematic planetary observations.

In Greece, the five visible planets were first given descriptive names. Saturn was Phainon, "the shining one" or "the one who appears". From around the 4th century BCE, under Babylonian influence, the Greeks began to call the planets after gods, and Saturn became the "star of Kronos". Assigning the slowest, most distant planet to Kronos, father of Zeus and the oldest of the gods in the main line of succession, made symbolic sense: the planet takes about 29.5 years to circle the sky (see orbit and year).

The Romans translated each Greek planet-god into their own pantheon. Since they identified Kronos with Saturn, their ancient god of sowing, the planet became stella Saturni, Saturn's star. The page on Saturn and Cronus explains how the two figures merged.

Where does the word "Saturnus" come from?

Ancient Romans linked the name to satus, "sowing", consistent with Saturn's role as an agricultural god; the scholar Varro gives this explanation. Modern linguists treat that as a likely folk etymology. An Etruscan origin has been proposed, connected to a deity name such as Satre, but the question remains unresolved.

The symbol ♄

The symbol for Saturn looks like a small letter "h" with a cross stroke at the top. Its history runs in three stages:

1. Greek papyri. In horoscopes and astronomical texts on papyrus from Roman Egypt, notably from Oxyrhynchus, planets were abbreviated. Historian of astronomy Alexander Jones showed that Saturn's sign developed from a contraction of the first letters of Kronos, kappa and rho.
2. Medieval reinterpretation. In Byzantine and medieval Latin manuscripts, the sign evolved toward its current shape and was read as Saturn's sickle or scythe, the tool associated with the harvest god and, later, with Father Time. A cross stroke at the top became a standard part of the sign.
3. Standardization. By the Renaissance, the familiar form ♄ was established in printed astronomical and astrological works. It is now encoded in Unicode as U+2644.

Professional astronomers rarely use planetary symbols today, preferring names or abbreviations, but ♄ remains standard in astrology and is used in some technical notation.

The symbol in alchemy

Alchemists paired each of the seven classical planets with a metal: the Sun with gold, the Moon with silver, and Saturn with lead, the heaviest and dullest of the common metals, matching the slowest planet. The ♄ sign therefore also stood for lead in alchemical texts. That link survives in medical language: lead poisoning is called saturnism (see Saturn in alchemy).

Saturn in other languages and cultures

In China, the five visible planets were matched with the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, water); Saturn was the earth planet, which Japan, Korea and Vietnam inherited. In India, Shani gives his name to Saturday, Shanivar, just as Saturn does in English.

Saturday and "saturnine"

The seven-day planetary week, which spread through the Roman world in the first centuries CE, assigned each day to a planet. Saturni dies became Saturday in English and Zaterdag in Dutch. French went another way: samedi comes from Latin sambati dies, "day of the Sabbath" (see why it is called Saturday).

Saturn's slowness and remoteness also gave English the adjective saturnine, meaning gloomy or taciturn, rooted in the medieval and Renaissance theory that people born under Saturn were prone to melancholy (see saturnine melancholy).

Names on and around Saturn

Saturn's moons carry names chosen under International Astronomical Union rules. The large regular moons are named after Titans and Titanesses and related figures from Greek mythology, such as Titan, Rhea, Tethys and Iapetus, extending the Kronos theme. Groups of small irregular moons are named after giants from Inuit, Gallic and Norse mythologies (see irregular moons).

Sources

• Jones, A. (1999), Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus, American Philosophical Society
• Varro, De Lingua Latina, book V
• Britannica: Saturn (Roman god)
• International Astronomical Union