Vulcan and Cerberus (or Kerberos) emerged as the people's choices for naming Pluto's tiniest moons in the SETI Institute's "Pluto Rocks" contest, which ended on Monday. But in the course of running the contest, the organizers fielded 30,000 write-in suggestions — and you may well see some of those suggestions surface in the future.

"I've been delighted by the response," said Mark Showalter, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute who played a leading role in the discovery of Pluto's fourth and fifth moons. Showalter was the point person for the moon-naming contest, which drew more than 450,000 online votes over the past two weeks.

More than 20 names were on the ballot, including Vulcan (the Roman god of fire) and Cerberus (the watchdog of the underworld). Vulcan was added to the list after the contest started, at the urging of "Star Trek" actor William Shatner, and grabbed the lion's share of the votes. But there were scads of other suggestions that weren't used, mostly because they weren't in line with the International Astronomical Union's tradition that the moons of Pluto should be named after figures from Greek or Roman mythology with some sort of connection to the underworld. Pluto was himself the mythological god of the underworld.

It's the IAU that has the final say over the names for the moons, which were discovered over the past couple of years and are now known merely as P4 and P5. Now that the crowdsourcing contest is over, Showalter willl be meeting with his colleagues on the discovery team and discussing whether to go with Vulcan and Cerberus or some other names. The names selected by the discoverers will then be considered by IAU committee members for adoption or reconsideration.

"It could take one to two months for the final names of P4 and P5 to be selected and approved," Showalter said on the "Pluto Rocks" website. "Stay tuned."

M. Buie / SwRI / NASA / ESA

These two pictures of Pluto represent the Hubble Space Telescope's most detailed view of the dwarf planet, but pictures from NASA's New Horizons probe should provide better resolution.

During a Google+ Hangout, Showalter mentioned the two most frequently suggested names that were left off the ballot. No surprise there: Considering that Pluto is a Disney cartoon character as well as a dwarf planet, you'd expect that Mickey and Minnie (as in Walt Disney's talking mice) would be the favorites.

"Yes, I am a big fan of Disney myself, but no, they are not compliant names," Showalter said. Although Mickey and Minnie make a cuter couple than Orpheus and Eurydice, they're not Greek or Roman mythological characters connected with the underworld.

Some of the other names, however, may come up again. When NASA's New Horizons probe sails past Pluto in 2015, still more mini-moons might be spotted. P6, P7 and so on would provide additional opportunities for the "compliant names" on Showalter's newly expanded list. And that's not all: New Horizons' camera could to snap pictures of previously unseen features on Pluto and its moons, That opens up a new frontier for names.

The names of planetary features don't have to follow the rules about Greek or Roman mythology: On Mercury, for example, craters are named after famous writers and artists. The hydrocarbon lakes detected on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, are named after the earthly lakes they resemble. Titan's mountains are named after the fictional mountains from "The Lord of the Rings" and other works by J.R.R. Tolkien, while the Saturnian moon's dark plains are named after planets from the "Dune" science-fiction series.

For Pluto and its moons, "we have all kinds of options," Showalter said. He noted that the naming suggestions followed some potentially appealing trends — specifically, Norse mythological figures as well as characters and locations from the "Star Wars" movie series and H.P. Lovecraft's fantasy and horror tales. Might we hear about Mount Loki, the Hoth ice sheet or Cthulhu Crater in the years to come? Will some scientist pick up on the Vulcan connection and start naming the hills of a Plutonian moon after Worf, Quark, Chakotay and T'Pol? To paraphrase another character from the "Star Trek" saga: "Make it so!"

More about planetary names:

• Uwingo aims to create Baby Planet Name Book
• How about better names for alien planets?
• Solar system's not changing — just the lingo

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

M. Showalter / NASA / ESA

An image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, surrounded by four smaller moons. P4 and P5 will be getting new names. One of them might be called Vulcan.

The organizer of a contest to name Pluto's two tiniest moons can't guarantee that either one of them will be called "Vulcan" — but now that the name nominated by the original captain on the "Star Trek" TV show has won first place in the voting, planetary scientist Mark Showalter promises to argue the best case he can.

"My starting position is that we should work with the names that received the most votes," Showalter told NBC News on Friday.

The "Pluto Rocks" voting concluded at noon ET Monday, and is being followed by a 1:30 p.m. Google+ Hangout sponsored by the SETI Institute, the place where Showalter works. Vulcan came out on top with 174,062 of the 450,324 votes cast. But don't expect Showalter to declare immediately that Vulcan is the choice for one of Pluto's moons.

"There will not be an announcement on Monday," he said.

For one thing, it's not totally up to Showalter to make the nomination. He's just one of the leading scientists on the discovery teams for P4 and P5, the two moons that were found in 2011 and 2012. All the members from each of the teams will have to agree on the names to be submitted to the International Astronomical Union for approval. Even then, the IAU could voice concerns about the names they submit, leading to alternate suggestions. Showalter said he's actually seen that happen in the case of the Uranian moon that ended up being called Cupid.

Kirk ... takes ... command
Vulcan wasn't on Showalter's initial list of prospects, but he added it to the ballot at the urging of William Shatner, the actor who played Captain James T. Kirk on the original "Star Trek" series in the late 1960s. Shatner favored the name because it was the fictional home planet of Kirk's pointy-eared science officer, Mr. Spock. "Let's hope the IAU thinks Vulcan is a good name," Shatner wrote in a tweet to his 1.35 million Twitter followers.

Showalter said Shatner's endorsement definitely skewed the results. "Early on, it's pretty clear there were some Trek fans who seem to have resorted to augmented voting technologies," Showalter said. But he's convinced that the groundswell of support for Vulcan is genuine, and he said he's "come up with a pretty good case" for using the name.

"I want people to feel that their vote counted," Showalter said.

The IAU's guidelines for Pluto's moons stipulate that they should be named after Greek or Roman gods who have some connection to the mythological underworld. Those guidelines worked for Pluto's three other moons, Charon (ferryman of the dead), Nix (goddess of darkness) and Hydra (a many-headed monster).

Vulcan has a family relationship to the underworld, in that he was Pluto's nephew. And in his capacity as the god of fire, Vulcan tended to hang out in the depths beneath Mount Etna and other volcanoes, rather than on the heights of Mount Olympus. That may not be Hell, exactly, but it's certainly the underworld.

Showalter admitted that it might be tricky to have the god of fire associated with one of the coldest places in the solar system. "It may well be there's a consensus that it's a great name, but not a great name for a moon of Pluto," he said. Also, the name Vulcan has been associated with a hypothetical planet that was thought to circle the sun within Mercury's orbit. The 19th-century French astronomer who discovered Neptune, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, spent fruitless years looking for it. Pluto's moon is in an entirely different place, but Showalter sees that as a potential plus.

"Maybe we'd be doing Le Verrier a favor by saying that when he was looking for the ninth planet inside Mercury's orbit, he was looking in the wrong direction," Showalter joked.

Some have said the name Vulcan should be reserved for a planet beyond our own solar system. In response, Showalter points out that there's no IAU procedure for giving names to extrasolar planets (beyond generic designations such as Kepler-37b or Gliese 163c). That situation may change if planet-naming ventures such as Uwingu take hold. But in the meantime, Showalter feels that Vulcan should at least be given a fair shot at solar system fame.

Another moon to name
So it's a sure thing that Showalter will try making the case for Vulcan. But what about the other Plutonian moon?

Cerberus held onto the No. 2 spot in the voting, with 99,432 votes, and so Showalter will argue the case for Cerberus as well. That name fits perfectly with the mythological underworld theme, because Cerberus was the three-headed hound that guarded the gates of the underworld.

One drawback is that there's already an asteroid named Cerberus, and the IAU doesn't want newly named celestial bodies to be confused with previously named objects. Showalter said there are at least two ways around that issue: One is to argue that the asteroid and the moon wouldn't be confused. The precedent for this is Io, a mythological name that refers to a Jovian moon as well as an asteroid. Another way out is to change the spelling slightly — say, to the Greek name Kerberos. One precedent for this is the Plutonian moon Nix, which uses an alternate spelling to avoid confusion with the asteroid Nyx. (By the way, there's already an asteroid named Vulcano, but that name is considered different enough from Vulcan,)

Opening the moon-naming process up to a vote has been a lot of work, even if it's a non-binding vote, and Showalter said he doubts that he'll do it again. But he's gratified by the response: The contest attracted hundreds of thousands of votes from scores of countries around the world, generated more than 30,000 write-in suggestions for names, and gave Pluto fans and "Star Trek" fans lots to think about.

What would Spock think about all this? Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played the alien on the original "Star Trek" show, said via Twitter that "'Vulcan' is the logical choice." I can imagine Spock saying that, but I can also imagine him uttering just one word. ...

More about Pluto and its moons:

• Pluto's moons offer clues to alien worlds
• Pluto's atmosphere larger than previously thought
• All about Pluto from NBCNews.com
• Cosmic Log archive on Pluto

This report was originally published Friday and was updated with the results of the "Pluto Rocks" contest on Monday.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Fri Feb 22, 2013 7:35 PM EST

Paramount TV via AP file

The original "Star Trek" TV cast included Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, the Starship Enterprise's pointy-eared science officer, and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk.

Just one day after astronomers asked Internet users to pick from a list of 12 names for Pluto's tiniest moons, they added a 13th name — Vulcan — at the urging of Star Trek icon William Shatner.

"Vulcan is the Roman god of lava and smoke, and the nephew of Pluto. (Any connection to the Star Trek TV series is purely coincidental, although we can be sure that Gene Roddenberry read the classics.) Thanks to William Shatner for the suggestion!" discovery team leader Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute wrote Tuesday in an update to the "Pluto Rocks" blog.

You don't have to be a hard-core Trek fan to know that Vulcan was the fictional home planet of Mr. Spock, the pointy-eared science officer on the original TV series' Starship Enterprise. Roddenberry was the series' creator. And long before he became a Priceline pitchman, Shatner played the Enterprise's skipper, Captain James T. Kirk.

The point of the "Pluto Rocks" balloting, which runs through Feb. 25, is to weigh public sentiment for the naming of Pluto's two most recently discovered moons, now known as P4 and P5. As the moons' discoverers, Showalter and his colleagues have the right to recommend formal names for adoption by the International Astronomical Union. They thought it would be fun to give the general public a non-binding advisory role.

The contest caught Shatner's eye, and he made a couple of suggestions in a Twitter update: "So what do you think of the idea of naming the two moons of Pluto Vulcan and Romulus? You have mythology, pos[itive] and neg[ative]."

Any voter can suggest write-in names, as Shatner did, but the names should refer to people, places or things in Greek or Roman mythology that have a connection to the underworld. Right now, the two favored names are Styx (which refers to a major river of the underworld as well as the rock band) and Cerberus or Kerberos (which refers to the underworld's guard dog as well as the modern-day network protocol).

More than 120,000 votes have been cast already, with less than 5,000 of them going to Vulcan — so Shatner would have to get those Vulcan votes multiplying like Tribbles to catch up to Styx and Cerberus. But that's not impossible, especially if he puts the word out to his 1.3 million Twitter followers.

As for Shatner's other suggestion, Romulus certainly has a connection to Roman mythology and Trek lore. In mythology, Romulus was one of the founders of Rome, while in the Star Trek universe, the name refers to the homeworld of a race that rivaled the Vulcans. However, one of the IAU's guidelines is that a proposed name should not be confused with pre-existing names for other celestial bodies. That poses "a bit of a problem," Showalter said.

"Romulus, along with his brother Remus, are the names of the moons of the asteroid 87 Silvia," he wrote. "They were discovered by a team led by my good colleague Franck Marchis, now a senior scientist at the SETI Institute."

Sorry, Captain. Because there's already a Romulus in this sector of the galaxy, scientists can't reuse the name. They just cannae do it.

Can you think of other mythological names with science-fiction connections? If they're not already taken, share your ideas in the comment section below — and send them along to the "Pluto Rocks" folks as well.

Update for 8:45 p.m. ET Feb. 14: Vulcan is now the top pick in the "Pluto Rocks" poll, with more than 60,000 votes out of the 234,720 responses registered. Styx and Cerberus are second and third on the list. Showalter has added eight more names to the ballot, bringing the total list to 21. The eight additions are Elysium, Hecate, Melinoe, Orthrus, Sisyphus, Tantalus, Tartarus and Thanatos. "Pluto needs more moons!" Showalter writes in a Cosmic Diary entry.

More about Pluto and its moons:

• Pluto's moons offer clues to alien worlds
• Pluto's atmosphere larger than previously thought
• All about Pluto from NBCNews.com
• Cosmic Log archive on Pluto

Check out Monday's Google+ Hangout about Pluto and the moon-naming project on the SETI Institute's website.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 12, 2013 11:30 PM EST