I'm working on a future setting with a bit of a cyberpunk feel. People have moved out into the main belt and are living in Asteroid cities mostly. What I need to do is figure out a reasonable set of names for the sectors of the belt.

I can define a region of space by it's degrees of a circle, distance from the sun in tenths of an AU, it's height above or below the plane of the system. However I don't think that people are going to refer to everything by a string of numbers. There would be enough change that it would not be simple to just define it by who lives there.

I thought about using Astrological signs as major sector names and then dividing from there but it just doesn't sound right.

Any help would be appreciated.

I would recommend going Astrological. try chinese astrology if you don't want greek/roman.

Could also do what they did for asteroid colonies in Cowboy Bebop, name 'em after Earth cities. 'Course, that really only works for individual colonies.

Astrological signs actually makes a bit of sense. The signs are already divided up into "houses" Map out the houses, and there's 12 sectors right there. Doesn't make for a very realistic political map, though.

I imagine the name would vary depending on who 'claimed' it (by discovery, occupation or purchase). Individual researchers would likely name them after individuals like 'Gibson' or 'Stering', or after mythological characters or other crazy stuff. Corporations would name them things that sound appealing like 'Utopia' or 'Grey Acres'. Research organizations would probably have their own naming schema, and there could be 'competition' between European and Asian universities even, so some follow a Western mythology theme and others follow an Eastern theme.

Well the sector navigation system is different from who claimed what. Basically the idea is that a megacorp lead the way to the stars and took over. They created the system. I wanted something that people could remember but wouldn't actually reflect any political borders because the megacorp considered it all their space.

The actual sector and subsector coordinates would be something like this:
Alpha Tarus Sector (245, 2.3, +0)

This would be 245 degrees, 2.3 au from the sun (most of the main belt lies between 1.9 and 4 AUs from the sun), and AUs above or below the plane of the eliptic.

They could also define a point by going into minutes and seconds for the degrees and going to several points on the decimal for the AU.

So far I've figured out that an alpha sector (the inner ring of sectors ranging from about 2 AU to 3 AU) is about 92 million miles on the inside ring, 1 au on each side, and 146 million miles on the back side (my math is a bit rough - I know).

I set the faster ships to a rate of 1 AU in 100 hrs so it would take several days to cross a sector. With a hand full of major asteroid cities and about a thousand smaller asteroids per sector tere is plenty to do in a sector.

Individual asteroid cities (I call them Tors for the ancient hills that the spirits lived in) can be named anything. Many are named after earth cities (Berlin Tor) and many are named after mountains (Olympus Tor). If it is a small station attatched to a small asteroid it is usually called a Bay.

I'm trying to think of more terms for this. I have a lot of small space stations that are designed to refuel a ship called TruckStops.

I need more terms though. People living in space stations all the time wouldn't call them Space Stations. They would have other terms for all of the types.

Any ideas?

A single corporation "claimed" and named them all? How do they enforce that naming schema? I imagine a lot of places would gradually get their own names, either because they get a reputation, or because people in that sector decide they'd rather be called something else.

Oh they could rename it but if you are using that coordinate system then that is how it was named. It's the coordinate system not a sign out in space. The chinese have a large presence and they use a different system. I just wanted to show a legacy of mass control at a point in the past.

If it's a western based megacorp, it would make sense to use a western-based system, either mythological or historical figures would seem likely in my mind. Historical figures would probably be a little easier if you have more than 80 or a 100 sectors, because very quickly you have to start dredging up really forgotten characters, and it may create a conflict with planet names, which historically have been based off of mythological characters. Historical figures don't suffer either of those problems, so again, you could have Franklin, Ford, Gibson, Newton, etc.