“Like European explorers who named the New World after their homes in the Old, the Mars scientists have filled the strange landscape of the Red Planet with a mishmash of modern life on Earth.

The twin rover missions have forced scientists to come up with more than 4,000 names to mark everything from the majestic Columbia Hills to a few pebbles in the sand.

The result is an extravagantly labeled map punctuated by the scientists’ ever-changing preoccupations with history, holidays, monkeys, ice cream, cartoon characters, sushi, Mayan words, Scandinavian fish delicacies … the list goes on and on.

It hasn’t been easy.

Sometimes a rock gets named twice. Sometimes the names run afoul of the official naming protocol. Sometimes a team member doesn’t like the theme for an area.

And sometimes team members get desperate.” (Yahoo! News)