https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-resources/constellation-names-and-abbreviations/
The Farnese Atlas, sculpted in late Roman times, is the first known depiction of the classical constellations.
Gerry Picus
Most of the well-known star constellation names date back to ancient Greece or earlier, but the precise list remained somewhat fuzzy until the early 20th century. Then, in a series of resolutions from 1922 to 1930, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) divided the celestial sphere into 88 precisely defined constellations with official spellings and abbreviations.
Every constellation name has two forms: the nominative, for use when you're talking about the constellation itself, and the genitive, or possessive, which is used in star names. For instance, Hamal, the brightest star in the constellation Aries (nominative form), is also called Alpha Arietis (genitive form), meaning literally "the Alpha of Aries." When space is at a premium, this is written α Ari, using the lower-case Greek letter alpha and the abbreviation for Aries.
The table below lists all 88 constellations in alphabetical order. If you don't want to scroll through the whole thing, click on the appropriate abbreviation in the index table. Click on the pronunciations in the main table to hear what they really sound like. After the table, there are extended discussions of the constellations' history, their names and meanings, and their pronunciations.
1The ancient constellation Argo Navis was split into Carina, Puppis, Pyxis, and Vela in the 18th century.
2In 1932 the IAU officially changed this constellation's name from Corona Australis to Corona Austrina (genitive Coronae Austrinae), but the revised name never really caught on. The original name is used far more often, and even the IAU website implicitly endorses it as an alternative.
3Australe, Australis, and Borealis are sometimes prounced aw-STRAIL-ee, aw-STRAIL-iss, and bor-ee-AIL-iss, respectively.
4Ophiuchus and Serpens used to share several stars. The IAU reforms assigned the shared stars to Ophiuchus, leaving Serpens in two disjoint pieces: Serpens Caput (the Serpent's Head) and Serpens Cauda (the Serpent's Tail).
5Before the IAU reforms, astronomers used the names Scorpius and Scorpio interchangeably. Scorpio is now used primarily by astrologers.
6Tucana and Tucanae are sometimes pronounced tyoo-KAY-nuh and tyoo-KAY-nee, respectively.
Star constellations are human inventions, not things that really exist "out there" in the sky. Different cultures have divided and organized the stars and deep sky objects in very different ways, though a few patterns (notably true physical clusters like the Pleiades) are so eye-catching that they're nearly universal. The constellations recognized by scientists today are the ones that arose out of the European tradition.
The major European constellation names are very old. A few, notably the Great Bear, are widely believed to predate the invention of writing some 5,000 years ago. And there's compelling evidence that many, including the zodiacal constellations, originated in Mesopotamia sometime before 1,000 BC. Somehow, the Mesopotamian constellations were imported into ancient Greece, but there's no record of how or why this occurred. As for timing, the Mesopotamian constellations were not mentioned in the works of Homer and Hesiod (about 700 BC), but they were firmly entrenched in the earliest comprehensive Greek constellation lists, which appeared around 350 BC.
The Greeks seem to have invented some constellations of their own, notably the Perseus family, around the same time that they adopted the Mesopotomian constellations, and a few more were added after 350 BC. The comprehensive list of ancient constellations appeared in a book written around AD 150 by the Greco-Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemy. This book, which summarized all of classical astronomy, is now known by its (entirely appropriate) Arabic name: Almagest, meaning "the Greatest."
Astronomy was neglected in Europe for more than a millennium following the Almagest, but it revived in the 15th century, when European navigators started to explore unknown waters. When these sailors ventured south of the equator, they saw stars that were not in Ptolemy's catalog and organized them into new constellations. Later, in the telescopic era, astronomers invented additional constellations to fill the gaps between the traditional ones — areas that were uninteresting to Ptolemy and the early European navigators because they contain no bright stars.