Grrl Power #377 – Club encounters of the third kind
The rooftop there would probably still have music playing, but being open air it would probably be a more reasonable volume to prevent noise complaints. I like the idea that there’s just some subwoofers pressed against the ceiling just beneath them and they’re getting muffled bass up their feet and butts. (Or try this one if you like)
What do you think the chances are of Maxima ever wearing gold lamé? It’s not zero, but it’s not very high either.
If the word “Human” sounded like the Galactic Common word for “poop smear” then we still have the option of going by Terran or Earther or even Earthican. Imagine a Star Wars like Galaxy with thousands of sapient species and thousands of different languages. Whatever your race called itself, you’d have to remember that there are like 350 different languages in which your race’s name is super rude, stupid sounding or insulting, and you have to remember an alternate version. That would extend to every individuals names too, of course. Luckily everyone in the Star Wars galaxy can understand Galactic Common, even if they can’t all speak it.
It bothers me in a lot of science fiction that most of alien races don’t have a species name, just something derived from the name of their homeworld. Vulcans are from Vulcan, Romulans are from Romulus, Ferengi are from Ferenginar. Klingons are from Kronos, so it would be legit to call them Kronans, (I would definitely watch a late night talk show hosted by Kronan O’Brien) BUT, it should be notes that prior to The Undiscovered Country, the Klingon homeworld was known as Klinzhai, and also Kling, so they only get half credit for that. (The writer for the movie probably had the same issue that I do and was just like “Nope, changing that.”) Star Wars is better about giving races names separate from their homeworld. Wookies are from Kashyyyk, but Mandalorians are still from Mandalore. It really depends on the ‘Verse though. The Star Control games* were pretty good about it. The Arilou Lalee’lay’s homeworld is Falayalaralfali, the Chenjesu were from Procyon, the Clairconctlar from Enkidu, the Druuge from Zeta Persei 1. It’s possible they were neighbors of the guys from Omicron Persei 8. (Known as Omicronians BTW.)
*Star Control II is one of my favorite games of all times BTW. That link is to a 100% legit free version of the game with an amazing soundtrack done by the community. Take heed this is a seriously old school game so if you decide to play it, it might not be the worst idea to use a walk-through or a FAQ of some kind since you can totally hose yourself many hours into the game and not realize it till many hours later.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Strictly speaking, Romulans would be a nationality-name; as species-wise they’re another Group of Vulcans (as are Mintakans).
It’s also reasonable to suspect they named the planet after their mythological inspirations once they got there, since it’s NOT their homeworld.
It’s also reasonable to suspect its not called Romulus AT ALL and that’s just the universal translator being cute with mythological analogy to convey shared memes across a rather deep language barrier.
Well, right now, it’s just a huge mass of floating debris
Not even that. It got swallowed up by a star, and then sucked down a black hole.
It did? Thought we were able to fly to the debris field? o_O
No, that’s the Hobus system. You DO get to visit Romulus briefly, in “Butterfly”
It’s (was) called ch’Rihan. Remus was ch’Havran. “Of the Declared,” and “of the Travellers,” respectively. Romulus and Remus are just the names given to those planets by the federation – the Rihannsu/Romulans don’t actually have any record of Roman foundational mythologies as far as I’m aware.
#nerd
I recall reading something somewhere that all ‘alien’ races call themselves ‘human’ in their own language.
but here’s one for you. We are called ‘terrans’ because our planet is also known as ‘terra firma’ , and no matter how you slice it, it means earth, or ‘hard dirt’ :)
Here on Earth many isolated tribes’ name for themselves translates as “The Human Beings.”
‘The People’ in a lot of cases…..
from what I’ve read, at least one of ‘the people’ are called that because they were/are cannibals. and after all, you are what you eat…
8D
Mintakans weren’t a Vulcan separatist group they were simply Vulcanoid, in the same way Bajorans or Deltans are Humanoid (as in basically human with minuet differences) or the populations of World’s like that seen in bread and circuses are human. Parallel evolution is a thing in Star Trek due to the genetic seeding of our galaxy by the Precursor race as seen in The Chase.
You gotta love that they have an area that doesn’t have the music, keeping people like Sydney (and myself) in mind at least.
for the budget that seems to have been spent just for the six of them to show up (so far Sydney, Peggy, Anvil, Dabbler, Harem, and Hiro, and maybe more that haven’t been seen on camera yet?)), and the decor, location, etc.etc. that club was pulling in the BIG bucks even BEFORE they forked over 30 G’s for them to just SHOW UP!!… now that the club can “Officially” say that “SUPERS Hang out HERE!!!” they will get MASSIVELY more popular and can rake in even MORE…
um… as i was saying, for a place that can afford that kind of payout, they will do EVERYTHING in their power to KEEP the people there and keep spending money… and if that requires a smaller room set aside for a “quiet” lounge for people to go and decompress after the loud, bright lights flashing all over the place, avoiding the camera toting goobers, in the high-stress environment of the various dance floors (as i’m sure there are multiple ones) and “bar scene/meat market” then they will most assuredly do so… To NOT do it would cause the public to migrate AWAY from the club after a while and if that happens, then they might not come BACK… and looking at the scene, it looks like Syd and Dabbler are the ONLY TWO people up there… I’ll even hazard some of my Moxana Points on the guess that the rooftop lounge was placed “off-limits” tonight, SPECIFICALLY for Supers-ONLY by the management, in order for them to get out of the lime-light for a while to avoid that horrible fate (for a club owner, that is) of the star-attraction(s) getting fed up and LEAVING!.. ie, that’s why the clubs that IRL movie-stars and other celebrities go to, they are always whisked away to the VIP Rooms and do not mingle (too much) with the “ordinary” plebeian clientele…
The fact that they showed up one night is going to mean the club pulls in huge numbers for the next several weeks however. “Oh yeah that’s the club the super-heroes went to, lets go and see if we get lucky and they come again”, not to mention the fact that press is there to cover heroes is 30,000 of insane publicity for the club itself, as that’ll probably be on every news station on tomorrows evening news, morning shows, chat programs, and late night comedy shows.
Turians are from Palaven (and any other alien from Mass Effect aren’t named after their respective planets), although I’m shocked such a mass of geeks (a “convention of geeks”?) like Bioware didn’t think of languages for each species… Hmm.
There’s a part of me that is super-interested in more of Dabbler’s world, but at the same time, I’m still wanting to see what kind of adventures are in store for everyone. The world feels massive, but we haven’t done much if you think about it — except breaking in or breaking characters, getting to know the politics, and some antics. I can’t wait to see more teamwork and how Halo is going to fit in.
They did. They just don’t want to waste space on the game module with a bunch of translation and exposition, so the player only encounters those that speak galactic common.
Think they actually mention in the game that everyone gets some kind of translation implant at a very young age so everyone is able to understand each other properly. Logical and a clever way not being needed to record alot of languages.
And they also put in stuff about it in the Codex. Turien and asari languages are both more literal than English, so they tend to be puzzled by human figures of speech.
Always figured it was a function of the Omni-tool since it’s about as ubiquitous as a cellphone.
In the 4th panel, is she hitting on Halo or casting some type of spell?
Why not both?
She’s speculating on the location of Anvil’s roadrash.
Maybe Dabbler’s seeing Sydney as a challenge – a girl who may be too ADHD (and too tomboyish) to be easily seduced. She’s pulling out all the slutty stops for this one!
Mrs Dabbler, you’re trying to seduce me… Aren’t you?
I really like the color of Dabbler’s outfit. Its also interesting to see just the two sexiest heroines together.
Fabric that color is often called “Champagne”.
Fabric that colour on Dabbles is called ‘flesh tone’ because it’s all an illusion and she’s wearing nothing at all (/cue sexy Flanders in his ski-suit)
I thought it was gold lamé. Looks like it atleast
Is Dabbler hitting on Sidney, or is she doing this unconsciously…?
If Dabbles wasn’t hitting on Sydney (intentionally or subconsciously), she would be dead (and more than likely still hitting on the pallbearers :P)
Don’t forget, WHO Dabbler is… (For the most part anyway.)
Dabbler is ALWAYS flirting. Syd’s just the only person there to be flirted with. Still, she’s being awfully… um… suggestive?
Gotta say (because not sure if anyone else has), totally loving Dabbles’ boots :)
I think you may have made a typo in the last word. The ‘t’ should probably be a ‘b’.
(And speaking of which, Dabbler’s dimensions in her current glamour has crossed line from ‘buxom’ to ‘moo’. )
No, she is not as big as Princess P-Cups
And no, was talking about her boots in panel four, would love a pair
I’m just saying, if it turns out that Obama literally isn’t a Lizardman like the tabloids say then tables will be flipped.
I always imagined the people of Earth ending up being called ‘Ens. Because if translators allow for proper nouns regardless of language (name of people, places, and things specific to a planet or culture) then the various words for “human” will have the common sound of “en” somewhere in them for most languages on Earth, thus the common middle ground for aliens to call people “en”
They are the En race.
Wait, isn’t the ‘En’ word bad? o_O
Just noticed misstyped own name :(
At this point it would just be cruel to mention you mistyped ‘mistyped’, so I will refrain from doing so.
I’d point out that you just mentioned it, but that would just be silly.
Damn, ‘mis’ words give me problems, because ‘mis’ has a red squiggle under it :(
Sydney wearing a Deadpool shirt at a club. Not surprised.
From what we already know about Dabbler, some kind of interstellar travel is around, and it’s obviously FTL.
Dabbler is not trying to seduce Sydney. I’m sure she’d like to, but it’s forbidden for her. Unconscious actions that look sexy are just one of the things she inherited.
There seems to be a lot of aliens around for an uncontacted noplace like Earth. Must not have a travel ban in place, and there does seem to be a pretty good ‘don’t freak the locals’ policy enforcement though.
Sydney doesn’t seem like the club type, but it’s good that she went. One to experience it, and two, it’s a chance to hang with the team out of work. Even when it’s not your preferred setting, it can help you understand each other.
Now I have to wait the intolerable period until a new page is posted. Ok, even if that was only 10 minutes I’d still complain since I’m not a doctor and so have no patients. (yes, bad joke :P )
That’s also the shirt she was wearing when she first left home that morning to go to her comic store before heading over to Archon.
From what Dabbler said to Sydney about not wanting to share her tech way back when, it sounds like the ‘don’t freak out the locals’ policy is enforced less by an outside body and more by the locals’ freakouts typically involving psychotic violence wreaked upon the one doing the freaking-out of said locals.
… that was kind of a convoluted sentence :-P
As a random aside, yeh, quite liking the framing of panel 4 too, and the whole page in general. Dave had a reasonable grasp of sequential storytelling right from the very start, and it’s gotten noticeably better as time has gone on.
That Does make a lot of sense, after all Sydney’s first reaction was to try and hit her with a chair, now imagine she was someone with actual violent responses and a real weapon!
Nice framing in panel 4. And loving Sydney’s expressions in that plus the final panel.
I hate that my only two comments on this site are about the same thing (makes me seem like a fanboy) but Bioware did a good job of diversifying their aliens in that regard, too. Not a single alien (that I can think of) is named for their plant.
Quarians are from Rannoch, Krogan are from Tuchanka, Asari are from Thessia. Turian, Elcor, Hanar, Drell, none of them are named for their planets. Although there are a lot of ‘ians’ (Quarian, Turian, Salarian, etc)
You shouldn’t. Nothing unusual or wrong using things from a game you like as comparison to stuff (Says she named after food from one). I also agree with you. I liked that about the aliens in Mass Effect and that many of them aren’t that typical “human with a little change to the face”.
Thirdly not all comes from planets that is like Earth, which has always bothered me when people talk about aliens. The it needs our kind of oxygen air, water and gravity, but why? There are plenty of life forms here who live in a deadly environment for us. Why can’t there be aliens who live on a highly radioactive planet or with a very high gravity. (For those that doesn’t know there is aliens in MA that lives on such)
Well, for one thing, getting too extreme in the differences makes it harder to relate to the species, or for them to operate in the same environment. So you could theoretically have a species that breathes methane from a planet with triple the gravity of Earth that’s highly radioactive due to have much higher concentrations of uranium and polonium in its crust, but how much does it and humanity have in common? What shared interests can they have?
Answer- nothing that a species without those extra traits couldn’t.
Why do we have to relate to them or have things in common? I fail to see what that has to do with it all.
So that the story is interesting.
And a story with exotic’s can’t be interesting? o_O
Just wanted to say that Mandalorians, were originaly race called Taung from Coruscant. They morphed over time into multi-racial clan society they are known as today. And Madalore the planet was named that when mandalorians settled there because of beskar ore for their armor.
Yeah, Mandalorians are also somewhat confusing in that ‘Mandalore’ can refer to a planet, or the leader of the clans. But yeah, Mandalorians aren’t much of a race (except maybe the New Mandalorians, but they’re a very different group). Biological connections mean a lot less to them, adoption (regardless of race) is pretty common with them. Mostly because they’re a meritocracy of warriors, if some orphan seems like good warrior material, they’ll adopt them in a heart-beat. Gender doesn’t matter much to them either, in that regard. Or age, adults can be adopted as much as kids can. Kinda one of the more interesting social groups in the EU, IMO.
It is really going to disappoint all those Bigfoot hunters once they find out all those blurry pictures they have been studying have really been photos of tourists from Kashyyyk.
So, instead of “Messin’ With Sasquatch,” the ad campaign should have said “Messin’ With Wookies?”
Damnit! Misspelled Wookiees! Nobody tell Chewbacca where I am, okay?
I’m surprised that in those commercials we don’t see a lot of people getting their arms pulled out of their sockets. Personally, I suggest a new strategy. Let the Sasquatch have the food.
That’s a good idea. Another would be to not tease or harass the critter.
You want bass vibes? Try some organ music with lot bass pipe. I have actually used my subwoofer as a foot massager. :-)
I like how she is caressing her thigh but I don’t like why she is doing it. I lied, make my Sydney fantasy come true!!!!
I don’t mean to be a turkey burger here but sapient != sentience…
Sapient essentially means wise, which doesn’t even always apply to humans.
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/sapient
Even in a loose meaning as relating the the human species doesn’t quite work.
https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/sapient
The only place that makes mention of intelligent species – and its the third definition –
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sapient
(chiefly science fiction) Of a species or life-form, possessing intelligence or self-awareness.
Sure the synonyms work https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/sapient but they are not the word itself
https://www.yourdictionary.com/sapient
Now I know I’m a turkey burger… but wrong word choice can really change the meaning of a sentence… https://www.rdrop.com/~hutch/argon
Please please forgive me…
(and now that i look at it more closely sentience isn’t really human specific either… man this is degrading quick… self-aware? conscious? on the path to enlightenment? who knows, let’s not philosophize – just sayin’ )
I always thought Sentient meant self-aware and intelligent, problem solving, etc, like a human, since they always used it like that on Star Trek, but recently someone convinced me that’s what Sapient means, and Sentient only means self aware in the broadest sense, like and animal that can distinguish itself from its own reflection.
I don’t have a lot of skin in the game either way, but I would like at least one word that unambiguously mean “the thing you test robots, artificial intelligences, aliens and, well anything that can claim to be “alive” to see if they qualify for basic human rights”
Dude, you are a writer, make one up!
I’ve always liked the idea of “people” for that threshold. Not a technical label but a good emotional one, and saying “legally robots of class 4 or higher count as people” is easily understood, though I’m sure if we ever reach that point some bigots will still disagree. Save “humans” for a species name.
You should read the Fuzzy trilogy (Little Fuzzy, Fuzzy Sapiens, and Fuzzies and Other People) by H. Beam Piper–its a bit dated, but a fun exploration of the concept of sapience. As a side note, if you decide to read the pre F&OP non-author sequels (Fuzzy Bones and Golden Dreams: a Fuzzy Odyssey), do it before you read the third book.
Oh, and the new sequel and the Scalzi reboot aren’t wonderful.
Howard Tayler uses SOPHONTS for sentient beings that are sapient and deserving of full rights and protections under the laws.
Yeah…I just checked wikipedia on this. ‘Sentient’ generally is used in sci-fi to mean ‘able to think on a human level’, I.E. emotionless robots or AI of a certain level qualify, where as ‘Sapient’ includes emotions in the mix. So yeah, in this case, sapient’s not really the wrong word to use, assuming you’re going for the way it’s used in sci-fi.
Link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience#Science_fiction
But it’s still not the scientific usage, which is that sentient simply means able to have a subjective experience. By that definition, anything with a nervous system or something resembling or functioning like a nervous system is sentient. There is a growing body of evidence that plants can sense and respond to their environment and even feel pain. This means plants are probably sentient in the scientific use of the word. Whether they can think and process information on the label of a human or not cannot currently be studied and isn’t even relevant to sentience.
Level of a human… Stupid phone
Why should we expect a webcomic to use the strict scientific use of the term instead of the more frequent use in casual conversation and sci-fi? That use is becoming common enough that they’ll have to amend the definition pretty soon.
I don’t always read the blog post, but i happened to see “Chenjesu” and have flashback ….Toys for Bob yaaaay! Those games were AWESOME. I had a illegit copy on my 486 and had to keep relaunching the game until I had a star system i recognized or I would never get passed the copy protection (no star map). I STILL have notes about the coordinated of systems.
Alright so I have to ask, I jsut have to, where are the MIB in this setup, I mean aliens all over the place on Earth, of course their has to be an MIB of some sort keeping the fact that aliens are all over the place as a secret….
It is possible that there is a separate secret INS group that handles the aliens. Considering that Archons higher ups clearly know about the extra-terrestrials, it would mean this secret INS group was coordinating with Archon in case one or more of the aliens started trouble.
On the other hand, it could be that Archon itself is policing the aliens just as they are the super villains. Perhaps the Arc-Dark branch of the group that X belongs to is in charge of this effort. X’s job is to keep an eye on an alien, after all.
What’s to cover up? People don’t notice what they’re not looking for. Just require use of hologuises and any glitches will be dismissed as mind playing tricks and such.
Not necessarily, but those that believe that they actually saw aliens are fairly like to be considered either crazy, or SETI nuts desperate for attention (or both), and mostly be ignored. Except, most often, by people who are also in either or both of those two categories. So, basically, any belief in it would most likely stick to the fringes of society, and capturing these aliens would probably be rather tricky, given their superior tech, so no live captures to prove that there are actually aliens on the planet.
I also have to ask, do you have liver with Scaliens? or just onions and mushrooms?
What?! We haven’t eaten them yet? Set a course to Zeta Persei 1 immediately!!
Mandalorians technically aren’t the speices but the group formed on that planet, since all that defines mandalorians is the armor they wear and their code of honor. One of greedos species is a mandalorian so it’s clearly not a species name. Though it might have been a species name prior to the trillogies since KotOR II seems to feature mandalorians all one species and soemthing similiar happened with the sith even further back. Of course mandalorians were almost exclusivley part of the EU which is now non cannon so who even knows what they are anymore.
I figure Mandalorian is like Judaism. You can be from Mandalore, follow the Mandalorian culture, be racially Mandalorian, to outsiders it’s all just assumed to be part of the same package.
I hate to seem like I am trying to out-fanboy everyone but…
You are the closest to being correct in your interpretation of “Mandalorian” as a term. The only issue with your interpretation is that being racially Mandalorian is not really a thing. It could be argued that the closest thing to “racially Mandalorian” would be being a direct Taung descendent (the humans from Coruscant who first came to the planet) but that happened so long ago that records of that don’t really persist.
A sidenote: if it helps anyone reconcile the same culture and planet, the name of the planet is actually “Manda’yaim” in the Mandalorian language, translating roughly to “Home of the Mandalorians” (unless someone feels like discussing the Mandalorian religion further, I’ll stop rambling.)
As I said, above, age, race, and gender all play less of a role with being considered a Mandalorian than ‘Can you fight/are you likely to become a good warrior’. Adoption is common, even including adults from other species. I’m excluding the New Mandalorians, who are pacifists and much less racially diverse.
As for the Sith…the problem there is actually pretty simple. People keep leaving out the ‘Lord’ in ‘Sith Lord’ and just call them ‘Sith’…when the Sith were a race enslaved by the original Sith Lords. At least in the EU. Not sure about in the Disney Retcon-tinuity (as I call it), nor do I care about said version of the Star Wars Universe. Ridiculous and complicated though it is, I much prefer the EU, thank you very much.
JJWars isn’t canon to me… Nobody gets to rewrite the Canon in one feel swoop, ripping the rug out from under lifetime fans. The fans own the franchise too, because they become the most invested intoo, and they are the ones who make popular. Star Wars is as awesome as it is because of how in depth the universe is. It’s that in depth because of the EU. Without the EU, the story becomes much more shallow.
And such, I refuse to recognize JJWars and will probably just wait till the blueray is on torrents because I will not dignify if with money. Even then, I’ll probably just watch it to watch it and understand the references.
Stupid phone… Fell swoop* and invested in it*…
I don’t know if it’s been covered, but mandalorian is just the term for humans from mandalore. Similarly, humans from corellia would be corellian, and humans from tattooine would actually be called tattooinian. It’s a geographical identifier, instead of a species identifier. Similar to Alaskan, Coloradan, New Yorker, etc. they’re all humans, they just get identified by planet of origin because they’re part of the most prolific species in the galaxy. That’s why naboo has Nubians and gungans. Geographical identifier, species identifier. Also that’s a grammatical modifier that appears in other species that inhabit multiple planets. If you were to talk about a…. Iridian, you’d actually be talking about a member of the zabrak subspecies of human, originating geographically from the planet iridia.
Yup, you don’t actually have ‘humans’ in Star Wars
Wait, what? …No, you do. Or at least there are a race highly similar to humans, referred to as humans, at least on some occasions. https://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Human/
Playing Star Wars Combine, you never had ‘humans’, they were all referred to by their planet
Just tried your link, and it says “The article you requested (Human/) does not exist.”, tried removing the end / but this machine doesn’t like wikia at the best of times and comes up “This page can’t be displayed”
https://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Human worked for me
I wouldn’t count demons as aliens just because they come from somewhere else. Demons have supernatural powers and origins. (You could try to argue that there is no definition of “supernatural”, but there are ways of defining it, and at any rate the characters in the universe are clearly able to distinguish between supernatural and non-supernatural things.)
Aliens refer to anything not originating from the location referred to. Which is why illegal immigrants are called Illegal aliens. Anything not from earth would be Alien in this context
Nice shout out for Star Control!
I had Star Control on a Sega Genesis. A friend owned SCII and I’d grab a 12 pack of beer and go to his place and play it hotseat.
I love the difference between tomboyish Sydney and hyper-sexual Dabbler and how they just chill together, being themselves. Also like this Dabbler as a mystical/alien mentor for Sydney bit developing, in contrast to Max’s military/powers/common sense mentor roll with her.
Good reaction from Sydney as well. Instead of freaking out (aside from initial surprise) and making a scene, she grabs the person most likely to have some clue and checks.
If Sydney grabbed the true sight ball just then, she would probably catch Dabbler typing into a handheld with her two hidden arms –looking up terms to mess with Sydney. No need to look at the screen as it echoes to the artificial eye.
I hope nobody here got PO’d at me for comparing Harem to Zartan…!
Zartan?
Hmmm. Can’t really see any resemblance, myself.
Yo Joe, by the way.
Zatanna maybe?
Hmm, have yet to see any of the Daphne’s talk backwards, or wear fishnets, tails and a top hat
Maybe she meant Zarana, Zartan’s sister
Well atleast someone else really likes Star control 2. Also Android users can get it on their phones and there’s an unofficial third one that looked really promising but I don’t think people have really been working on it for 5ish years and the bug report group was absolutely terrible but it still looked promising. If I knew anything about programming I’d try to revive it but I don’t. Seriously though, if you haven’t already try star control 2.
Weird, I had a dream one of the mystery orbs controlled other people.
On the rooftop lounge,after Dabbler leaves,Sydney should drop off.
Another good reason they don’t call themselves Morans: https://www.stinque.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/morans.jpg
A somewhat random thing, calling humans Terran has always driven me crazy. It isn’t exactly bad Latin, but it is idiotic if you have an understanding of classical culture.
While the Latin Terra does mean “earth” or more accurately “Land” it isn’t in the sense of the planet. A proper use of Terra is things like Terra Incognita; Land of The Unknown. Terra whatever is just talking about a region or country The Land of Whoever or Whatever. When the Romans had a solid understanding that there was such a thing as a Planet they used the name of their equivalent of Gaea, Tellus, to refer to Earth. It isn’t that Terra was never used to refer to Earth in antiquity, but it was always in the form Terra Mater, or Mother of The Land (Earth Mother). Terran really only emerged in 30’s+ era pulp sci-fi as a way to refer to humans that sounded science-y because of the scientific tradition of using Latin to name things. Ultimately the usage did get picked up by actual scientists, but it is annoying to a classicist.
Correctly it would actually be Telosian.
Telosian? “Those who have a goal”?
That sounds a bit egotistical as it implies that all other species do not have a goal.
That would actually be from the Greek. Telos is the Ancient Greek for Goal/Purpose, but in Latin it is the masculine possessive form of Tellus. So, “Those of Tellus” or the exceptionally hippy sounding “People of The Earth Mother”
Regarding the terran for earth only appearing since the 1930s, how about this lovely gem which just turned up in my twitter feed this morning? Check out the centre of the diagram :D That’s using terra for ‘earth’ rather than ‘land’, arguably, as it in an astronomical/astrological text.
As the mansucript dates to 818 CE, it’s definitely a correct usage drawn from living Latin, as it were.
Earthlings are from Earth! This is terrible, we have to come up with a better name for ourselves.
We are Humans. Or Hunams, if you are a Spathi.
Forget the Spathi. It’s the Snathi that all of Galactic Civilization should fear.
I’m amused that you used a scatological reference.
This is possibly an apocryphal tale, but some details are quite accurate. Before it became a multinational Exxon was called Esso. Which (phonetically at least, I’m not sure on the spelling but I suspect it would be ‘essu’ or ‘issu’) means “shit” in Japanese. They hired mainframe time to find a word which had no meaning in any known language to change to, and Exxon was the result.
“Esso” came from the initials of the company it was started from, Standard Oil. When they were broken up by the US Government as a monopoly, it was split up into several companies, including Mobil and the company which became Exxon. Fun fact: Mobil and Exxon have since become one company again…
I love how your list of “other” weird inhuman beings on earth trails off directly into your own name. ^_^
Of course, Procyon and Zeta Persei are *our* names for those stars, so it seems unlikely that they are in any way related to the names the locals use for their home stars or their home planets. They could have been named Cheng and Druu, for all we know! But unlikely: based on human languages, it makes sense for an inhabited star system to be named the local word for “sun,” their planet named the local word for “earth” or “land” or “home,” and the people to be named their word for “people.”
Given the whole “Morans from Mora” line, I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned the Myth Inc naming convention. A couple people have brought up the fact that in the Myth series ‘Demon’ is short for ‘dimensional traveler’, but nobody’s mentioned that the two main characters are from Klah and Perv, making them a Klahd and an
PervertPervect respectively. There’s also the Trolls and Trollops from Trollia, Devils from Deva, Imps from Imper… Basically every dimension named is a pun of some sort.Shouldn’t this have a ‘later’ title, ’cause I was confused that Dabbler wasn’t on the dance floor o-o
Watching both Buffy and Angel I came to the conclusion that all those demons might as well be straight up aliens. They even have home planets.