Elpis is asteroid #59 and was discovered at Paris by Jean Chacornac in 1860. It was the sixth and last asteroid, that the French astronomer Jean Chacornac did discover. Elpis is of the type C or CP (Tholen) or B (Bus and Binzen). Elpis’ orbit is characterized by a semi-major axis of 2.71 Astronomical Units, an eccentricity of 0.12, a period of revolution of 1 633 days, and an inclination of 8.6 degrees.

Elpis is named after the Ancient Greek word elpís (ἐλπίς). This means hope and was personified as a young woman, who carried flowers or a cornucopia in her hands. Hope was the last evil in the box or jar of Pandora. This woman was made by the gods in order to make humans suffer, so the Ancient Greeks had seen hope as merely an extension of suffering. While some researchers discus whether elpís (ἐλπίς) means only hope or also expectation, the Roman version spes is personified as a slender girl walking only on her toes and thus showing that this hope should be understood as reaching.

After the discovery of asteroid #59 had a controversy arisen over the naming of this asteroid. The discoverer was promoting a plan to reorganize asteroid nomenclature, so that they would be named after their discoverers instead of naming them after mythological figures. So Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, who was the director of the Paris Observatory that time, had at first denied Jean Chacornac the right to name the asteroid. So the Austrian astronomer Edmund Weiss, who was studying the asteroid, encouraged Karl Ludwig Edler von Littrow, who was the director of the Vienna Observatory, to choose a name for asteroid #59. Karl Ludwig Edler von Littrow chose the name Elpis. So Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier revised his decision and permitted Jean Chacornac to choose a name for the asteroid if he found a mythological name. His English colleague (because this couldn’t stay a French versus Austrian thing) John Russell Hind suggested the name Olympia. So Jean Chacornac, disliking the Austrian intervention, picked the name Olympia. But this was too late, the name Elpis stuck already. So Olympia later became the name of asteroid #582.

Elpis represents hope and reaching. Anecdotes around the discovery and naming of a celestial object give the most important hint on their meanings. The name Elpis came from a third party because the guy with the right to name the asteroid tried to break the rules. So Elpis also represents fair-play. This should especially hold true in cases, where Elpis is in an aspect with Olympia (asteroid #582). Elpis will rather not enforce fair-play, so that the fair-play here is a kind of hope too.