Named after the asteroid Pallas

Then farseeing Jove grants this to the prayers of Athene

Some species are preyed on by little owls ( Athene noctua ) in central Asia.

The next year astronomers found another small planet in the same area and named it Pallas.

He was born either in the townland of Pallas, near Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland, where his father was the Anglican curate of the parish of Forgney, or at the residence of his maternal grandparents, at the Smith Hill House in the diocese of Elphin, County Roscommon where his grandfather Oliver Jones was a clergyman and master of the Elphin diocesan school, and where Oliver studied.