Aliens with one name vs. aliens with two names

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

About Spock's full name, the last page of Barbera Hambly's novel Ishmael gives it as S'chn T'gai Spock. Sarek is S'chn T'gai Sarek of the Hgrtcha Clan.

The old Treknical fanzine USS Enterprise Officer's Manual by Geoffrey Mandel gave his full name as Xtmprszntwlfd Spock. I imagine he just mashed the keyboard.

[Timo]

Of course, it could be something as simple as "Carl", and all humans just pronounce it in a way that really hurts Spock's ears.

I mean, you probably couldn't really pronounce "Timo", either.

Timo Saloniemi

[The Wormhole]

^^It's not "Tee-mo"?

[iguana_tonante]

Tai-mow?

[Takeru]

teacake wrote:

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Vulcans have more than one name, it's just the surname is unpronouncable by humans.

I never liked that explanation, all of their first names are easily pronouncable by humans but the last names (all of them apparently) are not?

[Christopher]

^No, the Vulcan family name is generally assumed to come before the given name, as in Asian naming order (see the examples in KingDaniel's post above). Which makes sense in a society that values family/clan ties so highly.

It could be that Vulcan family names are extremely long and complicated, indicating multiple generations of lineage or elaborate clan interrelations, so the pronunciation difficulty is more due to the length and intricacy than due to the phonemes involved.

[Timo]

^^It's not "Tee-mo"?

That's just it - it sounds easy enough, but odds are that you would aspirate the "T", make the "ee" just a tad too long, and turn the "o" into an "ough" of some sort when it must be but a single sound, not a diphthong of any sort. You would immediately reveal yourself for a foreigner in Finland just by calling me by my given name.

Spock might be unable to stand all the little things that are wrong with how Kirk attempts to pronounce his surname... Although Kirk probably has Spock's given name down pat, considering Spock's own father pronounces it the exact same way. That is, unless Sarek uses the human-style pronunciation as a subtle insult to his son.

Timo Saloniemi

[iguana_tonante]

Funnily enough, in the Italian dubbing of the original series, Spock was usually pronounced something like "Spahk", while in the following films, it was usually pronounced like "Spohk". I always wondered why.

On the other hand, due to the phonetic differences between English and Italian, also all the other names were pronounced quite differently from the original sound. McCoy became something like "MacKoee", and Kirk sounded more like "Keerk", etc.

[Gotham Central]

iguana_tonante wrote:

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Funnily enough, in the Italian dubbing of the original series, Spock was usually pronounced something like "Spahk", while in the following films, it was usually pronounced like "Spohk". I always wondered why.

On the other hand, due to the phonetic differences between English and Italian, also all the other names were pronounced quite differently from the original sound. McCoy became something like "MacKoee", and Kirk sounded more like "Keerk", etc.

Perhaps this might explain why in "The Immunity Syndrome" Kirk kept referring to Lt. Kyle as Kowl

[T'Girl]

Christopher wrote:

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It could be that Vulcan family names are extremely long and complicated, indicating multiple generations of lineage or elaborate clan interrelations, so the pronunciation difficulty is more due to the length and intricacy than due to the phonemes involved.

I wonder is a part of the difficulty of pronouncing Spock's family name might be linked to the range of frequencies Vulcans can hear?

Vulcan are depicted as being able to hear frequencies Humans can't. Humans can hear (basically) between 20 hertz and 20,000 hertz. Amanda said she could pronounce the name after years of practice.

Could Amanda have trained herself to produce sounds, that she herself could not hear?

[Christopher]

^But that doesn't address the consistency problem Takeru raised: namely, if every Vulcan proper noun we've heard over the decades has been easily pronounceable, why would Spock and Sarek's family name be such an extreme exception?

[T'Girl]

^ That's assuming that when Spock said "Koon-ut-kal-if-fee," the dash punctuation marks do not represented additional sounds that we could not hear, and not just breaks between words and/or syllables.

Koon-ut-kal-if-fee might actually be a single run on word, and not five syllables.

Portions of Spock's family name might be within our range, and other portions not.

[Christopher]

^But that still doesn't make sense of "You couldn't pronounce it," because it's still pronounceable after a fashion, and the distinction would be undetectable to human ears. So why not just tell Leila his other name?

[Elder Knight]

Captain Rob wrote:

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I think Spock's last name is probably one of those alien names we hear Will Smith use in MIB. With pops and whistles and such.

Hmm, he could serve as a Silly Party candidate for Parliament. (For those of you familiar with the Python sketch.)

[Timo]

the distinction would be undetectable to human ears. So why not just tell Leila his other name?

But in that case, Leila would be constantly voicing name all wrong, and Spock would have to listen to it.

Even if the surname of Spock, Amanda and Sarek (and perhaps Sybok) is "Carl" to the human ears and tongues, this doesn't mean our favorite semi-Vulcan would wish to put up with the wrongly shaped vowel, the improperly rolling r, and the l that is 47% too short, not to mention with dropping rather than rising pitch, every time he manages to make Leila happy. It's worse if there are "secret" (ultra- or infrasound etc.) elements there that make all the difference to the Vulcan ear, so that it sounds as if Leila is expressing her admiration of somebody from a different Vulcan family altogether!

Timo Saloniemi