Arin-majlep

Authors: Susanne M Hoffmann, Clive Ruggles, Youla Azkarrula

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Arin-majlep (also Arin-mājlep or, altermatively, Aṛ in Mejleb) is an asterism formed of ε, ζ, and ω Aql recorded in the Marshall Islands in Micronesia.

Concordance, Etymology, History

August Erdland was a German missionary and ethnographer who spent the years 1900-03 in the Marshall Islands, where he observed and documented cultural customs and mythology in great detail. As part of this work he recorded and identified 66 names of stars and asterisms. In his list he records Aṛ in Mejleb as an asterism formed of ε, ζ, and ω Aql (Erdland 1914: 79 #35), Mejleb being Altair (ibid.: #34). In their Marshallese–English dictionary Abo et al. (2019) identify the asterism as Arin-Mājlep and explain the name as meaning “image of Mājlep”, Mājlep, “big eye” being α, β and γ Aql.

Mythology

mnemonic tales and cultural significance

References

• Abo, Takaji, Byron W. Bender, Alfred Capelle, and Tony DeBrum (2019). Marshallese-English Online Dictionary. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. ling.lll.hawaii.edu/dicts/MOD/,
• Erdland, P. August (1914). Die Marshall-Insulaner. Münster i.W.: Aschendorff (Biblioth.que-anthropos, 2(1)).