Did you ever notice were the name Tora (Ziyal) might come from? I somehow just noticed it now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah I have seen it written Tora, Thora and Torah (like on the Wiki-page), but that could be were they have the name from, couldn´t it? Where do the other names come from? Like Dukat, Damar, Garak... just made up in a creative moment or are there also connection to specific things? TerokNor
^ Agreed. Most of names are created for the show(s) and I seriously doubt that the writers were looking for any meaning. Maybe sometimes but not for each and every character, especially recurring ones.
^ I think some of the names really has a meaning XD In DS9 there was a character named "Tahna" and "tahna" is a finnish word for paste/dough/compound! It made me really "LOL"
They might have a meaning, either intended or accidental, but I doubt that the writers think of this aspect every time they make a name for an alien.
Putting a random apostrophe in makes it alien. Putting apostrophes and random capitals in makes it Klingon.
Wouldn't make sense to deliberatley apply meaning to alien names. They're not from Earth, so why would they have names that relate to Earth mythology and so on. Might as well just give them all human names. I'd want at least one "Dave".
I'm sure the UT would render a suitably appropriate translation of any alien name. But it would be something to have an alien with an "alien" name that just so happens to sound like an existing word in (Earth) language. "Hello, my name is Ch'air and this is my associate, Treee." But that never happens, do it??
But they do: Spock (Dutch), Kira (Gaelic/Russian/Japanese) Nerys (Welsh), Jadzia(Polish), Ezri (Hebrew), Dax (French), Deanna (English) Hell, there are even people with the name Worf and Odo is a saint! Of course these aren't real aliens and the writers are picking these names for various reasons. It might not go any deeper than its sounds good or they might be trying to convey something about the characters through them.
Ah, but Deanna has a human father. That could be why she has an English name. Although, I doubt that's the case with Spock.
When the TNG episode, "A Matter of Honor", premiered, and we saw poor ol' Riker cope with the live food on a clunky, old Klingon vessel, we didn't know how to spell IKS Pagh, but when we checked some "p" words in the official Pocket Books' "Klingon Dictionary", the closest Klingon word meant "indigestion". TOS famously used some clever names: Uhura (feminine form of the Swahili word for "freedom"), mindwiped Lethe, after the "river of forgetfulness", Harry Mudd (whose name was "mud"), a librarian called Atoz (A to Z), Crewman Green who was a rather "green" crewman, and Helen Noel, whom Kirk met at a Christmas party.
Jups, that what I mean. They do choose character names for qualities of the characters or also meanings to earth history and such. Of course "true aliens" would not have that, however as these aliens are human-made, construted out of what humans know for their realitis, there are connections to human meanings. Thats after all what the whole show is about, playing with questions we have on earth today, be it ethical, historical, hierachical, personal etc. There is no alien contruct inside, because human minds though of the show and not alien minds. Maybe some names are here that just got made-up for no other reason then to sound alien or cool, but I do think that with a lot of the names the authors did had something in mind when giving the names to the characters. Jadzia for example means fighter...and we do have with her a character, that is strong and fighting back and not giving up so easily. The authors transport meanings in the names they choose and I think especially for recurring characters that could be important,because they do not have all the time like they have for the main charaters to get the personalities etc. across, so a name, that already gives away a bit of the character might be important. TerokNor P.S. Damara for example means the loving and the "da" part of the name comes in other names from the word "dati" with means giving...of course this is probbaly a bit far stretched, but well...he did love Cardassia a lot and Dukat also, which is to see, because of the loyality he gives to them.
It's fun to speculate on this kind of thing, but I'm pretty sure sometimes the names have a deep or semi-deep meaning and other times, they're chosen just for the way they sound. There are only so many syllables, so sometimes chance alone can invest a name with meaning, even if that meaning wasn't really intended by the writers.
I know someone who's Swedish - she's never been able to get over the way the Borg are named "fort." They're not really the hunker-down-and-wait type... For that matter, why is Kirk named "church"? He's not particularly religious.
As a fiction writer myself, I sometimes use real words and create anagrams. Bill Everett, the fellow who created the Sub-Mariner, took several noble sounding names and spelled them backwards. The Sub-Mariner's name, Namor, is Roman spelled backward for example. I guess that's what the O.P. was driving out. In DSN, I do recognize one character's name: Kira Nerys. Nerys, her given name, has a number of meanings, as indicated here. It's of Welsh origin, and means "noblewoman." Hell, I created a character for one of my stories who is essentially a warrior-woman or amazon, so in her name, I used an anagram for "virago," whose ancient meaning was akin to amazon or strong woman. Also, certain species names have only a passing resemblance to the original meaning, like Vulcans. Vulcan was the Roman smith-god, the equivalent of the Greek Hephaestus, and the only connection is fire, as Vulcan is a hot, desert world. And the first Vorta was named Eris, which is the name for the Greek goddess of discord, and she certainly caused discord in her first appearance.