Humans by Any Other Name: Difference between revisions

 

A subtrope of this is [[Planet Terra]].

 

== General ==

* "Terran" (from the Latin ''Terra'', "Earth") is probably the most popular choice by far, which crept into all kinds of settings, from ''[[Starship Troopers]]'' to ''[[Blake's 7]]'' to ''[[StarCraft]]'', along with [[wikipedia:Terran|other examples]]. It probably got popular because it sounds like [[Planet of Hats|what you might call some alien race]], and, at some point, wasn't immediately recognisable as "Earth", so it feels "alien". "Terran" also [[Rule of Cool|sounds cooler]] than "Human".

** The term "humanoid" refers to anything relatively human-shaped (bipedal, upright, two arms, one head), including [[Ridiculously-Human Robots]], [[Rubber Forehead Aliens]], and denizens of the [[Uncanny Valley]]. Sentience and genetic relation to humankind are not required.

 

* ''[[Keroro Gunsou]]'' gives us the title of ''Pekoponjin'', because they refer to Earth as "Pekopon". In the manga it was "Pokopen", a rather nasty Japanese word for the Chinese, which was changed for obvious reasons.

* In ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'', humans and miniaturized Zentradi are known as "Microns" ("Micronians" in ''[[Robotech]]'').

 

 

* ''[[2000 AD]]'''s alien Editor-In-Chief, Tharg the Mighty, refers to humans as "Earthlets."

* In the original [[Marvel Comics]] version of the [[Transformers]], the Autobots would refer to us as humans, while the Decepticons used the more derogatory "fleshling".