Naming and later designations

At discovery the moons carried no names, only the designations first and second satellite of Uranus. In 1848 William Lassell, who had discovered Ariel and Umbriel the previous year, gave Titania the designation Uranus I and Oberon Uranus II, though he sometimes used William Herschel's own numbering, in which Titania and Oberon are II and IV. In 1852, at Lassell's request, Herschel's son John suggested names drawn from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: Titania, queen of the fairies, and Oberon, the fairy king.