You might be surprised to learn that the outskirts of the solar system are loaded with Plutinos, Centaurs, cubewanos and EKOs. Astronomers didn't even know this a decade ago. In fact until 1992 they hadn't even invented three of the terms.

Now it seems they don't have enough of these crazy names.

During the past decade, hundreds of objects have been discovered in a bewildering range of locations and orbital configurations beyond Jupiter. During that same time, astronomers have invented a puzzling set of designations -- some straightforward, some creative, some downright amusing -- to describe their findings.

Jonathan Horner, an Oxford University researcher who leads the push for an expanded space rock vocabulary, calls the present system "not very enlightening." His approach claims to allow for a better understanding of the history and fate of these wanderers of the way-out.

The new scheme would be tacked onto -- or rather under -- the existing one, Horner explained in an e-mail interview.

In the 1940s, Irish economist and astronomer Kenneth Edgeworth predicted there might be a more distant belt of objects orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper made a similar prediction in the early 1950s (apparently without knowing about Edgeworth's writings).

Kuiper's prediction was more widely recalled when, in 1992, the first of these distant space rocks was discovered. Most astronomers began using the terms Kuiper Belt and Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), but soon Edgeworth was remembered and controversy arose.

"One compromise was to call it the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt (EKB)," explains Joel Parker of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). Parker maintains an electronic newsletter called Distant EKOs, for Edgeworth-Kuiper Objects, the term of preference for those who support the EKB alternative.

Adding to the controversy, some scientists pointed out that even earlier predictions of the faraway objects were made by other researchers in the 1930s. None of their names eked into the peculiar phraseology of the outer solar system, but a minor political correctness movement ensued.

"One suggestion was to call them by the non-partisan and more descriptive name 'Trans-Neptunian Objects' (TNOs)," Parker told SPACE.com.

The terms KBO and TNO are interchangeable and used with about equal frequency, he said, and EKO is employed "much less so, and will probably disappear from common use soon -- leaving the title of the newsletter as a mysterious relic of past nomenclature wars."

We're just getting started here.

As more types of objects were discovered, astronomers noticed distinctions between them having to do with where and how they roam. While many space rocks circle the Sun relatively unencumbered, some are gravitationally linked to planets.

Hence terms like Plutino, cubewano and Centaur.

As if merely to confuse things further, a Plutino has a weighty affinity for Neptune, not for that other planet you might have suspected. In science terms, a Plutino is in a 2:3 mean motion resonance with Neptune.

"This means the object goes around the Sun twice in the amount of time it takes Neptune to go three times around," Parker explains. "So, the term refers to a kind of orbit, not anything about the physical properties of the objects."

Pluto is in a 2:3 resonance with Neptune, too, and since it was the first of this sort of character, the others came to be called Plutinos, Parker said.

Back to our head-spinning array of terms. Objects near Plutinos that are not attracted into resonances with Neptune are called cubewanos. These make up the "classical" Kuiper Belt, a relatively thin region of space that corresponds to the same plane in which most of the planets orbit, Parker explained.

The origin of the word "cubewano" is perhaps the most extreme example of nomenclative amusement among astronomers.

The first KBO found was initially designated 1992 QB1, Parker explains. Its a name that denotes the year, month and order of discovery and is typical for newfound objects whose orbits are not pinned down. It was later learned that 1992 QB1 was a "main belt" KBO, not a Plutino, and so astronomers just began sounding out "QB1" and a new term was born.

Space rock aficionados might be thinking by now of a more familiar acronym, the dread NEO. This necessarily draws our discussion inward.

I promised earlier to tell you about Centaurs. They are truly odd, and they are at the heart of the movement for a new classification system.

Astronomers can't decide whether to think of Centaurs as comets or asteroid-like KBOs. Many of these strange bodies are more than 62 miles wide (100 kilometers), which is way bigger than a comet is supposed to be. Yet they're known to generate clouds of gas and dust characteristic of a comet.

Importantly, Centaurs carve non-circular paths around the Sun and are typically affected by the gravity of two planets. When closest to the Sun, a Centaur's movement might be directed by Jupiter or Saturn. Farther out, it could fall under the influence of either Uranus or Neptune.

In addition, Centaurs can be divided into four types based on how much their paths are tilted with respect to the main orbital plane of the solar system, Horner's team says. So their proposal would generate labels like SN III and SU IV, with the letters standing for planets and the Roman numerals representing orbital inclination. The notation could be extended to cover objects beyond Centaurs, but that aspect hasn't been worked out yet.

A paper detailing the proposed classification system will be published in the Aug. 21 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Armagh Observatory astronomers Mark Bailey and David Asher, along with Wyn Evans of Oxford and Cambridge universities, contributed to its creation.

No existing terms need be discontinued. "I'm quite attached to them myself," Horner said.

SwRI's Joel Parker, who was not involved in developing the new plan, says classifying objects by type of orbit is useful because "theories of the formation of the outer solar system make predictions about how many objects are in each type of orbit and explain how they get there."

Whether or not any of this gains widespread use depends on how useful other astronomers find it, Horner's team figures.

Since the scheme would help astronomers trace the histories of objects that share similar orbits, it would also help them predict where those things might end up.

"We hope that we have perhaps cast a net of order over what up to now has been a rather chaotic field," Bailey says, aware that chaos reigns not just among astronomers but in the outer solar system, too.

Which leads us to what is perhaps the most pragmatic motivation for putting more ink behind the names of newfound objects.

Bailey points out that some of these very distant and very large hunks of stone and ice -- be they comets or Centaurs or whatever -- will eventually end up being booted to the inner solar system.

"The enormous amount of dust that would come off such an object as it approached the Sun would be an environmental hazard for Earth," Bailey said.

Worse, Earth could get directly in the way, in which case the whole scheme might be blasted into oblivion. But at least we'd have had a better chance to see it coming.