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Of the People: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings. It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other people and calls them The Other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on.''|'''[[Terry Pratchett]]'''
The [[Proud Warrior Race]] of [[Noble Savage]]s has what the heroes perceive as a simple, [[Mighty Whitey|possibly even backwards]], culture. During their talks or negotiations (or heated battles), however, they'll run into one [[Blue and Orange Morality|nearly incomprehensible]] linguistic and cultural custom: Their name for their tribe is translated "The People", but the name they have for the heroes? "Not-People".
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== [[Literature]] ==
* The Mri in
* [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[The Carpet People]]''. See page quote.
* ''[[Discworld]]'':
** This trope is deeply examined by Pratchett's co-authors in the ''[[The Science of Discworld]]'' books, in which Cohen and Stewart refer to the cultural conditioning and education of children as the "Make-A-Human-Being Kit". Every tribe has one exclusive to itself, and if you grew up in a culture that uses a different version of the Kit, your status as a True Human Being is probationary at best.
** A similar idea is used in ''[[
{{quote|It is more than just a wall, it is a marker. On one side is the Empire, which in the Agatean language is a word identical with "universe". On the other side is - nothing. After all, the universe is everything there is.
Oh, there may ''appear'' to be things, like sea, islands, other continents, and so on. They may even appear solid, it may be possible to conquer them, walk on them... but they are not ''ultimately'' real. The Agatean word for foreigner is the same as the word for ghost, and only one brush stroke away from the word for victim. }}
* The ''[[Artemis Fowl]]'' fairies refer to themselves as The People. Even the few humans who have contact with them, such as Artemis, use that name. They refer to humans as Mud Men.
* The Atan people of David Eddings' ''[[Tamuli]]'' are a bog-standard [[Proud Warrior Race]], so naturally it's mentioned at one point that they consider everyone else to be non-humans. In a bit of a twist, though, they've long since sold themselves as slaves to the Tamul Empire, because without an external interest directing their warlike tendencies they would quickly devolve into constant civil war.
* Diane Duane's Trek novel ''Spock's World'' gives many details of the history Vulcan, including "The Sundering." "United Federation of Planets" translates into Rihan (aka Romulan) as "Them, from There." And Klingon Empire as "More of Them, from Somewhere Else."
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