Shock and Oa

Here is some comic book trivia to impress your friends with: In the 1960s revival of Green Lantern, the character that helped usher in the Silver Age of Comics the author of the series (Presumably John Broome) named the planet headquarters of the Green Lantern Corps as Oa, which is situated at the center of the fictional DC universe.

Why John Broome chose that combination rather than make up a silly alien barely-pronounceable word can only be speculated but it is likely that the name of Oa was created by placing together the number Zero and the letter A, with the number and letter being pronounced in the long form as "Oh-Ah".

This was probably no accident. The name is derived from the physical coordinates of the planet, being at the center of the universe, that of Zero/A. It's really clever and obvious on the part of the creative team and I feel embarrassed to realize that if I ever read about or figured out the origin of the name of the planet before this I subsequently forgot all about it.