My guess is the imaging team for the Galileo Mission at JPL named most of them. However, Voyagers 1 & 2 did flyby's preceding Galileo and imaged Europa but not to the extent that Galileo did.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?Sort=Alpha&Alias=Galileo&Letter=G&Display=ReadMore
JPL is in Pasadena, California but the Galileo Mission had team members from all over the world.
Apparently the European Space Agency is planning a mission to Europa in 2022. So far I can't find who named the craters but I'll ask on Twitter.
Coo! Yes, there's Welsh and Irish/Gaelic. Rhiannon, Dylan, Taliesin etc.
well you will not believe this , take a look at Jupiter's moon Europa , note the names of the craters on there ....we will not be forgotten - Celts for ever ....try Wikipedia for Europa .
Q'apla! as they say in Klingon! It's the only Klingon I can ever remember. We'll just have to keep our collective fingers crossed that there's nothing like the Borg out there but it would quite nice to have Vulcans.
On 12 September 2013 Voyager I officially left the solar system and began it's journey into interstellar space where, as far as we know, " no man has gone before ." Aboard this spacecraft is a gold plated, 33 rpm LP record containing a star chart with coordinates to the third planet from Sol, technical instructions explaining how to play the greetings in 55 Earth languages on the flip side of the album along with an "invitation" to any alien race who stumbles across this golden jewel now, or in the distant future, to come visit us.
This Golden Record was the brain child of Astronomer Carl Sagan.
I remember thinking at the time that this might not be a good idea. Carl Sagan dismissed criticism from his colleagues saying that any civilization advanced enough to intercept mankind's first interstellar spacecraft would have, or will have, long ago put aside the primitive emotions of greed and aggression. I hope he is correct--Klingons, Romulans and the Borg notwithstanding.
Anyway, Welsh, or Cymraeg, is among the 55 Earth languages included in the greetings from Earth on the golden record. The speaker in Welsh says " Good health to you now and forever " (translated into English). The actual recording now winging its way through interstellar space is here.
Let us hope [and pray] Dr. Sagan's optimistic outlook about potential discovery by an alien race is true. After all I doubt, or at least I hope, that though we might be considered primitive they will at least consider us more than just a good source of protein.
Perhaps even more optimistic than Dr. Carl Sagan are the words from the Chineese Amoy [Min] dialect included on the record: " Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time ."
