Law of Alien Names: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (comics)|Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' has a lot of made-up or spelling altered names: Tinya, Brin, Luornu, Jo Nah, Wimena... to name a few.

 

* There are plenty of alien personal names in ''[[With Strings Attached]]'': Stal, Keelan, Grynun, Fi'ar, Remlar, Terdan, Lyndess, Grunnel, Brox, As'taris, Ma'ar, Kerrun, Sapsa, Deris, Bayanis... but just try to figure out which ones are male and which are female.

** [[Word of God]] has it that the names are internally consistent based on a scheme of the author's own.

** It is traditional on Pern to name a child with a combination of the first half of the father's name, and second half of the mother's name. This is occasionally abandoned when the result is awkward, or could cause [[Unfortunate Implications|confusion as to paternity]].

** All male dragonrider's names have an apostrophe stuck in: their names are shortened forms of their pre-Impression names. A prequel novel tells us that it is the dragons that first started doing this and that they, at the time, shortened the names of both men and women. Shortened names are meant to be easier and quicker to shout while in the air, which explains why the dragons turned Falarran into F’lar. (The danger of mishearing names is apparently not as important.) After Jaxom Impresses Ruth, Lessa<ref>Additional capital letters available at reception upon request</ref> wryly notes that weyrwomen usually choose names that produce something nice when shortened: J’xom and Jax’m don't quite cut it, to her ears. ([[Fridge Logic]]: J’om is dead easy.)

 

== [[Live-Action TV]] ==

* The ''[[Star Trek]]'' franchise had plenty of these: Kalo, Malin, Cadmar, Domar, Talas, Talla, Keval, Melora, Latara, Liria, Gilora, Tagana, Onaya, Damar, Danar, Toran, Nador, Aluura and Anara. The token [[Proud Warrior Race Guy]]s, the Klingons, had names such as Kang, Kor, Koloth, K'Voc, Kaz, Klag (Klingons are very fond of K, it seems), Morak, Brok'Tan, Leskit and Thopok.

** 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.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Naming Conventions]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]