Skip to main content

star trek - Why aren't more species' planets named differently from their species name?



  • Andorians come from Andoria (or Andor)

  • Vulcans come from Vulcan

  • Romulans come from Romulus

  • Breen come from Breen


  • Betazoids from Betazed

  • Cardassians from Cardassia


The list goes on and on (with a few exceptions, like Kronos).


And then you have humans (terrans) which come from third planet in the Sol system called Humania, err Terra, err Earth.


Why the lack of creativity in planet names for other species?



Answer



Nearly every species that controls their entire home world/system is named after said home world/home system with the notable exception of two: the Klingons and the Humans.


So it's natural to ask, "okay, if they were going to make an exception for two, why not all of them?" However, it's much easier to explain if we ask the converse first: why are Klingons and Humans treated differently?


Qo'noS wasn't established as the Klingon home world until Star Trek VI. Before that, the only canonical mention of the Klingon homeworld was in "Heart of Glory" when it was actually called Kling. Klingons from Kling: follows the same convention as all the other species.



The Star Trek Encyclopedia explains why it was changed:



At the time the episode was written, Kling was intended as the name of the Klingon Homeworld. Once the episode was filmed, it was realized that the name sounded pretty silly, so later scripts simply referred to "the Homeworld." The only time the Homeworld was given a name was in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, when it was called Qo'noS, pronounced "kronos."



So that just leaves us Humans on Earth: calling us anything other than Humans or Earth anything other than Earth would be too foreign and confusing for the audience. We're humans, so that's what we're called. In Human languages, the use of the word predates First Contact and moreso the convention of calling species by their origin planet/world.


You might ask, "why do the species all call themselves by their planet name instead of by a local name like the Humans do?" Well, they do use localized names: for example, "Klingon" in Klingonese is "tlhIngan". But due to the magic of the universal translator, whatever localized name species use to call themselves gets translated to follow the Human convention.


That is, Klingons could call themselves "tlhIngan" or "Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadoo" in Klingonese, but the word would automatically be translated to "Klingon" by the Human universal translators. In the same manner, the word "Human" would be translated to the localized word used by Klingons for Humans by their translators.


So to answer the question, the reason why species aren't given more exotic names is because, given the universal translator, it'd be entirely unnecessary. Humans (and by extension, the audience) wouldn't need to use the localized name in everyday situations.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...