Par Toutatis! A lost asteroid and a Celtic god

How an asteroid seen in 1934 was lost for decades, then found and named after a god of Gaulish tribes.

Published 2026-10-23

Some asteroids are discovered once. Toutatis was found twice.^[2]

1934: seen and lost

The asteroid was first sighted on 10 February 1934 and given the designation 1934 CT. Without enough observations to fix its orbit, it was soon lost and stayed a lost asteroid for decades.^[2]

1989: found again

On 4 January 1989, Christian Pollas rediscovered it at Caussols in southern France. Its provisional designation became 1989 AC.^[2][1]

The god

Pollas named it after Toutatis, also written Teutates, a Celtic god known from literary sources and inscriptions. The name derives from a proto-Celtic word for “tribe”, suggesting a tribal deity.^[3] The Roman poet Lucan mentions Teutates alongside Esus and Taranis as gods of the Gauls.^[3]

The comic connection

In France the name is best known from the Gauls’ catchphrase “Par Toutatis!” in the Asterix comics.^[2] In those stories the villagers fear only that the sky will fall on their heads — a nice joke for an asteroid that keeps passing close to Earth, though its orbit is well enough known to rule out a collision for centuries.^[2]

Numbered citations link to the sources list on the Toutatis overview page.