Circular Pattern on Text Boxes

[scodavis]

I am working on creating a model of the Stargate prop for 3D printing, but I'm putting my own spin on it.  I'm currently experimenting with a few things, and one of those things involves putting the constellation abbreviation below each of the 39 glyphs, using the ancient font text.

Attached you can see an image of what I'm working on.  I've placed one of the text boxes exactly where I want it, and I now want to create an additional 38 text boxes using a circular pattern so that their positioning and rotation is perfect.  However, when I activate the circular pattern tool it doesn't seem to allow me to select a text box.

Seeing as each set of three characters needs to be unique, how would I accomplish this?

Thank you!

[HughesTooling]

Easiest way might be just pattern a line then use text on path to add the text to each line.