Why was Pluto named after the Roman and Greek god of the lower world?
All the planets visible to the naked eye have been associated with the gods since ancient times. After the invention of the telescope, when scientists began to find new planets they followed a tradition of also naming them after the gods. When Pluto was discovered, it was given the status of a planet, although it has since been reclassified as a dwarf planet. Since Pluto is so distant from the sun, it is a dark planet, receiving little light from the sun, so the scientists felt that the god of the underworld, Pluto, would be the most appropriate god to name the planet after.
