Uranus meaning
Uranus was discovered by William Herschel on 13 March 1781. It has two astronomical signs. One, ♅, is built from Herschel’s H. The other, ⛢, is an orb and spear. Neither is ancient. The planet was not part of the old seven lights.
The first planet found by telescope, and the one with two glyphs that will not agree.
The name. Uranus is the Latin form of Ouranos, the Greek sky. Johann Bode urged the mythological name. Herschel had wanted Georgium Sidus, George’s star, for King George III. The sky-god won. The glyphs did not settle as cleanly as the name.
Where it comes from
On 13 March 1781 William Herschel, observing from Bath, saw an object he first took for a comet. It was a planet, the first found with a telescope, beyond Saturn. The seven lights of the old sky were finished as a complete set the moment the orbit was sure. Naming took longer than finding. Herschel’s Georgium Sidus did not travel well outside Britain. Bode’s Uranus did. The signs were invented because tables had a new row and needed a sort. One sign is an H, Herschel’s initial, with a small globe hanging from the crossbar. Unicode encodes that form as URANUS, U+2645, ♅. The other sign is a circle with an arrow or spear standing on it, the orb-and-spear, encoded as ASTRONOMICAL SYMBOL FOR URANUS, U+26E2, ⛢. Astrologers in the twentieth century largely preferred the second. Astronomers and older British tables often kept the H. Neither glyph was cut in a medieval type case. There was nothing to cut until 1781. The metals of the septenary had no slot for this planet. Later writers assigned it meanings anyway. Those meanings are younger than the discovery by at least a century of occult publishing. The lexicon’s drawing is a schematic of the Herschel monogram, not a font specimen of either code point.
Astrology
A light with no metal waiting
Saturn was the edge. Lead was its metal. Uranus arrived without a pairing that the furnace books had agreed. Modern astrology gave it rupture, invention, and the sudden turn. Those glosses are a literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They are not a sentence Herschel wrote, and they are not a Babylonian omen. You can use them as a reading. You cannot backdate them to the night in Bath. The planet is real. The temperament is a later reader of the planet.
Modern
Two sorts in the type case
If a chart prints ♅, it is using Herschel’s letter. If it prints ⛢, it is using the orb and spear. A page that shows one and names the other is simply wrong. Unicode keeps both, which is the useful fact: the disagreement was large enough to need two characters. The old seven did not have this problem. Their glyphs were inherited. Uranus had to be designed, and it was designed twice. The discovery date is the origin. The glyph you prefer is a choice of school.
In popular culture
tv · 1992
Sailor Moon (Sailor Uranus)
Haruka Tenou's yellow ⛢ (circle, upright line with dot, two side bars) appears on her forehead; read as sky and flight.
The anime borrows the astronomical glyph as a character badge that appears on the forehead at awakening.
SourceWorth knowing
Questions
What does the Uranus mean?
Uranus was discovered by William Herschel on 13 March 1781. It has two astronomical signs. One, ♅, is built from Herschel’s H. The other, ⛢, is an orb and spear. Neither is ancient. The planet was not part of the old seven lights.
How do I type the Uranus?
The character is ♅ ⛢ (U+2645 U+0020 U+26E2).
Why does Sailor Moon use Uranus?
Haruka Tenou's yellow ⛢ (circle, upright line with dot, two side bars) appears on her forehead; read as sky and flight. The anime borrows the astronomical glyph as a character badge that appears on the forehead at awakening.
Near this
- SaturnWeight, time, and the stage of the work you cannot skip.
- NeptuneA planet predicted on paper before it was seen, then marked with a trident.
- Planet EarthThe floor of the old cosmos, given a sign only after the wanderers had theirs.
- PlutoA monogram for Percival Lowell that outlived the category the planet was put in.
Sources
Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.
Your margin
Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.
symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 20 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.