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Law of Alien Names: Difference between revisions
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See also [[Planet of Hats]], [[NameTron]] and [[Xtreme Kool Letterz]].
{{examples}}
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'''s characters generally follow this trope to a T. Garrus, Liara, Wrex, Kal'Reegar, Tali'Zorah... There are simply too many examples to list.
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** In the original series, there seemed to be a specific rule about this. ''Every'' named Klingon had a name beginning with K, while male Vulcans had names beginning with S and ending in K, with three letters in the middle, and females had names beginning with T'. ''Enterprise'' stuck to this mostly, as did the earlier movies (with the exception of Saavik, a half Vulcan-half Romulan woman, and Maltz, a Klingon crewman). Worf broke the pattern.
*** A [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade]] is hung on the similarity of Vulcan names in the [[Expanded Universe]] novel "The Lost Years", which explains that the S--K pattern is in honor of Surak. In a flashback, a contemporary rival of Surak berates another Vulcan (who has just changed his own name to fit the pattern), pointing out as the years go by, Surak's followers are going to have to come up with increasingly ridiculous names. Also note: Assuming that their alphabet has 26 letters, this allows for only 17576 distinct male Vulcan names. (And this includes names without vowels!)
**** The ''TOS'' production staff was acutely aware of this, if not terribly concerned. ''The Making of Star Trek'' by Stephen E. Whitfield, published in 1968, reproduced a series of tongue-in-cheek memos that started with an extensive "official" list of Vulcan names (all in the S--K pattern), complete with accidental duplicates; later memos in the series justified these duplicates have having different pronunciations before spinning off into extreme silliness.
** On ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]]'', all Talaxians have an X somewhere in their name.
** In the novelization of the "reboot" movie ''[[Star Trek]]'', Nero explains that Romulan names are all but impossible for humans to pronounce correctly, so it is customary to render them into English by pronouncing the closest phonetic equivalent ''backwards'' (Which Romulans find less grating than hearing their names consistently butchered). Nero's name is really closer to "Oren", but the "r" can not be faithfully reproduced by a human.
*** In an interesting coincidence, this means that Sela, the half-Romulan daughter of Tasha Yar, may actually be named something close to "[[Alice Allusion|Alice]]".
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*** Denobulans like "m", "g", "p" or "f" sounds.
*** Betazoid males have names of one or two syllables (Tam, Cort, Gart, Ven), the females of two, three or four (Anissina, Mollarana, Damira), while their family names often end in n (Enaran, Kaldarren, Povron) or x (Xerix, Mryax, Xerx).
*** Efrosians tend to use a "Ra-" prefix on the surname (Ra-Yalix, Ra-Havreii, Ra-Ghoratreii), but not always
*** Benzite names are two syllables and harsh-sounding (Meldok, Salmak, Cardok).
*** Alonis have long names like Quirmirkis, Nerramibus or Liezakranor. When off-world, they add a shorter additional name to the beginning to designate their function (“Tel” is diplomat, “Los” is soldier), and split the name in two (e.g. Los Tirasol Mentir is probably Tirasolmentir back home, Ambassador Tel Ammanis Lent is probably Ammanislent).
*** Bolian names tend to be one or two syllables.
*** In [[John M. Ford]]'s ''The Final Reflection'', the initial "K" in Klingon names is revealed to be an indicator of rank; lower caste Klingons could have names with any initial letter ''but'' "K", but if they advanced sufficiently far, they were allowed to replace that initial with a "K". One character named "Gelly", for instance, advances to a point where she can change her name to "Kelly" (which reaps her numerous jokes about being Irish when she first encounters humans).
** In fact, most races and cultures show patterns in their naming, often subtle ones. It is possible in many cases to identify a character's species or culture by name alone.
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' and ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' have more than their share - for example: Orlin, Harlan, Mallin, Nyan, Darian, Ren'al, Kalan, Pallin, Merrin, Marin, Perna, Sallis, Selana, Vala Mal Doran, Shayla, Zarah, Chaya Sar and Ladon Radim. Prominent Jaffa (the warrior race) had names such as Teal'c, Bra'tac, Se'tak, and Gerak.
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