Why are Uranus's moons named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope?

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Images obtained by Voyager 2. — Uranus Two views of the southern hemisphere of Uranus, produced from images obtained by Voyager 2 on Jan. 17, 1986. In colours visible to the unaided human eye, Uranus is a bland, nearly featureless sphere (left). In a colour-enhanced view processed to bring out low-contrast details, Uranus shows the banded cloud structure common to the four giant planets (right). From the polar perspective of Voyager at the time, the bands appear concentric around the planet's rotational axis, which is pointing nearly toward the Sun. Small ring-shaped features in the right image are artifacts arising from dust in the spacecraft's camera.

The naming convention for the moons of Uranus originated with John Herschel, the son of the planet's discoverer, William Herschel.1

While most planets are named after figures from Greek and Roman mythology, the names associated with the Titans—the children of Uranus—had already been assigned to the moons of Saturn. To distinguish the Uranian satellites, John Herschel proposed using names derived from English literature, specifically selecting characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. This literary tradition has been maintained for subsequent discoveries of the planet's moons.1