Picture: A dark lonely night in Sicily. A lonely monk, Giuseppe Piazzi awake after midnight festivities for the 1st of January, 1801 checks his telescope one last time before bed. His interest is aroused by a small pinprick of light that he is unable to identify....
He named this light Ceres, after the pagan goddess of Sicily (!!!) and after finding a few more, he correctly labelled these objects, planetoids.
But 1802 saw William Herschel, who was slightly more famous due to his earlier discovery of Uranus, call these same objects, which to him looked like small stars, asteroids. However correct Giuseppe might have been in his naming of these leftover chunks of rock floating in space, the influence of William was stronger, and to this day we call them Asteroids.