Oberon (moon) after characters created by William Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. The name Oberon was derived from Oberon, the King of the Fairies in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". The names of all four satellites of Uranus then known were suggested by Herschel's son John in 1852, at the request of William Lassell, who had discovered the other two moons, Ariel and Umbriel, the year before. The adjectival form of the name is "Oberonian," . Oberon was initially referred to as "the second satellite of Uranus", and in 1848 was given the designation ' by William Lassell, although he sometimes used William Herschel's
IAU definition of planet moon) might be in hydrostatic equilibrium, but would still not have been defined as a component of a double planet, since the barycenter of the system lies within the more massive celestial body (the Earth). The term "minor planet" would have been abandoned, replaced by the categories "small Solar System body" (SSSB) and a new classification of "pluton". The former would have described those objects underneath the "spherical" threshold. The latter would have been applied to those planets with highly inclined orbits, large eccentricities and an orbital period of more than 200 earth years (that is, those orbiting beyond Neptune).