Naming Your Colony World: Difference between revisions
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* '''Starname''': Even better, someone already came up with a name for the star long ago. Let's just call the planet the same thing, and forget the number. No, that wouldn't be confusing, why do you ask?
* '''[[Egopolis]]''': Just name the planet after yourself! Thousands of years from now your descendants will still be singing your praises every day on [[Titan A.E.|Planet Bob]].
* '''Named the Same''': You are feeling ''really'' lazy? Just copy a name from home. Don't bother to change it
* '''Erehwon''': The old standby, inspired by Samuel Butler's 1872 novel of the same name. The perfect descriptor for that little mudball out in the back of beyond via (nearly) [[Sdrawkcab Name]].
* '''Planet [[Shout-Out]]''': Today's pop culture is the mythology of the future, so why not name your planets after planets in famous science fiction books, movies, and television shows?
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See [[Numbered Homeworld]] and [[Egopolis]] for examples of planets named that way.
{{examples
==
* [[DC Universe]] - New Genesis
* ''[[Rogue Trooper]]'' - Nu Earth.
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=== Film ===
* At the end of ''[[Titan A.E.]]'', they name the new planet New Earth. Actually, they just name it "Earth", but people adopt the "new" label for it anyway. (Of course, Cale wanted to call it [[Everything's Better with Bob|Planet Bob]].)
** The movie itself presents the planet at the end as "New Earth - (Planet Bob)"
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=== Literature ===
* There are plenty of "new" planets in the ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series, such as New Berlin and the city of Nouveau Paris on the symbolically named planet of Haven. New Dijon and New Geneva are also examples.
* ''[[The Mote in God's Eye]]'' had New Chicago, New Scotland and New Ireland.
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=== [[Live Action TV]] ===
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' had good old New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York, on New Earth. Also New Alexandria, New Savannah, and New Venus.
* The remake of ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'' had New Caprica.
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=== [[Video Games]] ===
* Ah, this is the way it is done in the computer game ''[[Civilization]]''. Each civilization has a list of city names, but this list is always far shorter than the maximum number of cities you can possibly have on larger maps, so if you expand a lot, and reach the end of the list, the list would restart except it would put the word "New" in front of it. With 2 exceptions/Easter eggs: Instead of New Tokyo, the name Neo Tokyo is used, and in instead of New Istanbul, the name [[Istanbul (Not Constantinople)|Not Constantinople]] is used. And just in case the "New" list is filled again, the list starts over appending a "-2" ("New York-2") to the city's name, then it starts over with "-3" ("[[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Tokyo-3]]"), and so on.
* ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'', the [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''Civilization II'', doesn't do "New X" when you use up your base name list, but the Headquarters for [[Church Militant|The Lord's Believers]] is New Jerusalem.
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=== [[Web Original]] ===
* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has several cases of this, including New Tokyo, New Paris, New Chicago, and New Madrid.
* ''[[Void Dogs]]'' has Nova Hibernia, Nova Caledonia, and Nova Terra (which strangely enough is in the Sol system).
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=== [[Comic Books]] ===
* [[DC Universe]] - Harmony
* [[Marvel Universe]] - Aerie, Mobius
=== Literature ===
* The ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series has Hades (nicknamed Hell). It's very aptly named. There is also Haven, which was originally a symbolic name but became far more ironic over time. Hope and Refuge also fit under this trope, as does the planet Torch, specifically named for its symbolic connotations.
** There's also the planet Masada, home to religious zealots, which clearly derived its name from the [[Real Life]] Zealots' last stand in the Roman War Against the Jews in 70 A.D..
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=== [[Live Action TV]] ===
* ''Andromeda'' - Acheron, Halcyon, Serendipity
* ''[[Blake's 7|Blakes Seven]]'' - Destiny, Goth, Horizon
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=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===
* [[Warhammer 40000]]: No one has any idea in what universe it was a good idea to name a planet [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Armaggedon]]. No, matter [[The Empire|the Imperium]] has been fighting so many wars against Orks on this planet that Armaggedon has come to mean paradise in the Ork language. It doesn't help that the current war was caused by the schemings of [[The Chessmaster|Eldrad Ulthran]] - a [[Recycled in Space|space elf]] with the ability to see the future.
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* One of the factions in ''[[Outpost 2]]'' named their colony Eden.
* The intro mission in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' takes place on a colony planet named Eden Prime.
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=== [[Web Original]] ===
* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has Avalon, a paradise of a planet thanks to liberal application of Life Magic, and the new capital of the Earth Federation after Earth itself is destroyed.
=== Literature ===
* The ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series is full of Mnemosyne names like Manticore, Sphinx, Medusa, Hades (nicknamed Hell, see symbolic names), and Gryphon.
* Joan D. Vinge's ''The Snow Queen'' - Tiamat
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=== [[Live Action TV]] ===
* ''Andromeda'' - Tartarus, Hephaestus
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' universe - Olympus
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=== [[Video Games]] ===
* ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'': The planet is officially named Chiron, after a centaur in Greek mythology (namely, one of only two good ones). In practice, everyone simply calls it Planet.
** Various other celestial bodies in the Alpha Centauri system are also given names related to Greek centaurs and their complex relationship with [[Classical Mythology/Characters|Hercules]].
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=== [[Web Original]] ===
* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has Hrothgar, after a character in Beowulf; Avalon, after a location in Arthurian Myth, and Enoch and Babylon, named for places in [[The Bible]].
* ''[[Artemis Neo]]'' has the planet Artemis, named after the Greek Goddess.
=== [[Real Life]] ===
* The names of most of the bodies in our solar system, such as Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Io, Europa, Titan, Ceres, Eris...
* A certain asteroid that has a relatively high chance of hitting Earth sometime in the near future (meaning not ''that'' high of a chance, just higher than usual for an asteroid) is named Apophis. Subverted: although apt mythologically (seeing as Apophis in Egyptian myth was the evil snake who kept trying to eat [[Ra/The Sun|The Sun]] every night), the astronomer who discovered it was definitely thinking of the evil Goa'uld Apophis from ''[[Stargate SG-1]]''.
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=== [[Comic Books]] ===
* [[DC Universe]] - 1417.196.E, J586
=== Film ===
* LV426 in ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]'' and ''Aliens''.
** Which is of course renamed Acheron in ''Aliens'', a reference to the mythological river of the underworld.
=== Literature ===
* Dan Simmons' [[Hyperion]] Cantos - NGCes 2629-4BIV
* [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] - M2398, M4-78
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=== [[Live Action TV]] ===
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' - S14, UX-4732
* ''Earth 2'' - G889
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=== [[Video Games]] ===
* In the ''[[Metroid]]'' series Samus grew up on K-2L and SR388 is the Metroid home planet.
* ''[[Alien vs. Predator]] 2'' - LV-1201
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=== [[Web Original]] ===
* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has this scheme for newly-discovered planets, but once they get colonized and settled, places named things like "H4" get renamed things like "New Madrid".
* In ''[[The Pentagon War]]'', the main planet of the Sirius system is named "America" by its inhabitants. Outsiders still refer to it as Sirius A IV, though.
=== [[Real Life]] ===
* Every star has anywhere from one to a dozen different referents depending on the number of catalogs it is recorded in, with each catalog having its own nomenclature. It can be the number of the star in the order it was discovered/examined, or a positional code. Most of the moons of the gas giants in our own system also fit this trope. Jupiter alone has 63 moons, the smaller ones only have a Roman numeral. A great many asteroids are also only known by a catalog number.
* Since we started discovering them in 1995, extrasolar planets are typically given the name of the star they orbit followed by a ''lower-case'' letter, starting with "b" and going in the order that the planets were discovered. The star Gliese 581, for example, has planets named Gliese 581b, Gliese 581c, and Gliese 581d.
=== Film ===
* According to [[Expanded Universe]] materials, this is common in the ''[[Star Wars]]'' universe. Of the planets featured in the movies, Alderaan, Bespin, Coruscant, Hoth, Kamino, Kashyyyk, Naboo, Utapau, and Yavin share names with their star. (Others, like Tatooine, are close.)
=== Literature ===
* In the ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' novels, the mythology inspired planet Manticore is located in the star system of Manticore. Same for Beowulf.
* In [[Anne McCaffrey]]'s Talent series, the planet Deneb circles the star Deneb.
* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''[[Foundation]]'' series - Gaia, Sayshell.
▲== [[Web Original]] ==
=== [[Web Original]] ===
* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has several cases of this, including Alpha Centauri, Wilke's Star, Jennifer's Star, and most of the rest of the planets, really, since if the planet isn't named for the star, the star is probably named for the principal inhabited planet.
=== [[Real Life]] ===
* This is the official astronomical policy for naming extrasolar planets: the name of the star, followed by a lowercase Latin letter in order of discovery. Since most stars have number-soup names like HR 8799, the results also fall under the previous category. Those few that don't include 51 Pegasi b and Tau Boötis b.
** Note that the star itself gets the alpha designation. The planets start from beta onwards, and that's assuming the system is not a binary etc. star.
=== Film ===
* Spoofed in the spanish movie ''[[Accion Mutante|Acción Mutante]]'' with the miner planet Axturias. In [[Real Life]], [[wikipedia:Asturias|Asturias]] is a region of the northwest of Spain
=== Literature ===
* Again, the ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series has an example with the planet Montana. Which is also a [[Planet of Hats]] who act like stereotypical Montanans.
* Returning to ''~The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy~'', the planet Damogran had islands named Easter Island and France. They were lampshaded by [[Douglas Adams]] by mentioning that in Galacticspeke, "easter" means flat, small, and light-brown, which Easter Island was; the name France, while not explained what it meant, was also an entirely meaningless coincidence, since one of the side effects of working on the Improbability-powered starship Heart Of Gold, which they were building on France, is a whole string of entirely meaningless coincidences.
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=== [[Live Action TV]] ===
* ''[[Andromeda]]'' has the planet Galena, which started out as a mining colony, switched to agriculture when the mines petered out, then to tourism when agriculture turned out to be not particularly profitable. This is also a capsule history of the town of Galena, Illinois.
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* In ''[[Freelancer]]'' they drop the 'new' for most systems; they have names like Pittsburgh, Houston, Leeds, etc. Most of the capitals are the exceptions; they're named New Tokyo, New London, New Berlin, and [[Odd Name Out|Manhattan]].
** Though Manhattan is in the New York system.
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=== [[Web Original]] ===
* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has New Madrid, which in-universe is an example of "New Planet" naming as above. But the real reason it was named that was that the Midwestern people who wrote ''Tech Infantry'' named it for New Madrid, Missouri, and the earthquake-prone fault line that runs through it.
=== Literature ===
* Guess what? ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' strikes again, with the planet Grayson, named after a religious leader who founded it.
* The planet Madrigal from ''[[Halo]]: The Cole Protocol'' may be named after a person. Madrigal being a Spanish surname and the inhabitants of the planet being culturally Spanish.
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=== [[Live Action TV]] ===
* Sherman's Planet, in the classic ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek]]'' episode "The Trouble with Tribbles". It is named for Holly Sherman, an old girlfriend of the episode's writer, David Gerrold.
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'' has a few examples:
** Virtually all of Morgan Industries' bases [[Egopolis|are all named "Morgan _______"]]. Of course, Morgan Industries is [[Mega Corp]], and with names like "Morgan Robotics", "Morgan Solarfex", "Morgan Collections", etc., it's fairly obvious that he's not ''quite'' that egotistical: presumably, these are all divisions of the corporation.
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** The Armstrong Nebula cluster features the Gagarin and [[wikipedia:Valentina Tereshkova|Tereshkova]] (the first women in space) systems. Humanity's first and largest deep space station is also named Gagarin Station.
=== [[Web Original]] ===
* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has Jennifer's Star, named for the girlfriend (and later wife) of the guy who originally created the game.
=== [[Real Life]] ===
* The unofficial name for Gliese 581 g, the first planet discovered outside of the solar system with a fair chance of supporting (Terragen) life, is Zarmina's World (or Zarmina for short). It's named after the wife of the chief scientist on the team that discovered it.
* For a time, Uranus was called "Herschel" after its discoverer, Sir William Herschel.
=== [[Live Action TV]] ===
* ''[[Firefly]]'' has Londinium (the Roman name for London), Aberdeen and Deadwood.
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* ''[[Star Control]] 2'' has the Supox, who live on planet... Earth. This causes some confusion between them and the Captain until they explain that their planet is called "earth" as in "soil".<ref>It's technically "Vlik", or "perfectly nutritious dirt", but as they say -- hey, "earth" is pretty close.</ref>
=== Literature ===
* Yet another [[Honor Harrington]] example, the Universe does indeed contain a planet Erewhon.
* [[Anne McCaffrey]]'s novel ''Nimisha's Ship'' has a planet named Erewhon with is perfectly descriptive of it.
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=== Comics ===
* In [[Legion of Super-Heroes]], the planet full of people who can ''eat anything'' is named after ''stomach medicine''—it's called ''[[Punny Name|Bismoll]]''.
=== Literature ===
* [[Larry Niven]]'s Known Space has Planet Godzilla (in the same system as Home). Nobody seems to know what the hell the namer was thinking, or what he was referencing.
* Jerry Pournelle's [[CoDominium]] stories - [[The Lord of the Rings|Sauron]]. Unsurprisingly, this ended very, very badly.
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=== Live Action TV ===
* ''[[Firefly]]'' has Heinlein and [[Shout-Out/To Shakespeare|Miranda]].
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* Many of the planet names in ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'' are [[Shout-Out|references]] to other media or mythology.
* In ''[[Escape Velocity]]'', names of planets and their systems are often references to famous novels and films, particularly those featured on ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''. Examples include [[Dune]] (Arrakis system), [[Gamera|Akio]] (Guiron system), [[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|Beeblebrox]] (Zaphod system), [[Dark Star]] (Nemesis system), [[Mystery Science Theater 3000|Hikeeba]] ([[Gymkata]] system), [[Samson vs. the Vampire Women|Samson's Planet]] ([[El Santo]] system). Whether Sauron is a reference to ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' or the [[CoDominium]] novels is unclear.
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=== Web Original ===
* The asteroid colony of Cielo in [[Nexus Gate]].
* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' has Hadley, named for the town of Hadley's Hope in ''[[Alien (franchise)|Aliens]]''.
=== [[Real Life]] ===
* The dwarf planet of [[wikipedia:Eris (dwarf planet)|Eris]] was originally named [[Xena: Warrior Princess|Xena]] by the team that discovered it. Naturally, they also named its moon Gabrielle. When that was also rejected by the astronomical community,<ref>"Xena" and "Gabrielle" were temporary names used by the research team during the discovery and verification phases; they knew there wasn't a KBO's chance on Mercury the IAU would allow them to stay permanently.</ref> [[Genius Bonus|they re-named the moon Dysnomia, which translates as "Lawlessness", after Lucy Lawless, the actress who portrayed Xena on television]].
* Another asteroid in the Main Belt is named [[wikipedia:12796 Kamenrider|12796]] [[Kamen Rider|Kamenrider]].
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=== [[Real Life]] ===
* The discoverer of Uranus was Sir William Herschel, a German who moved to England and did his most important work there, later becoming a British subject. He wanted to call the planet itself ''Georgium Sidus'' ("George's Star") or just "Planet George", after King George III, who was his patron. The name didn't stick.
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