TransporterBeam
Lieutenant Commander
Where did they come up with the names of the planets they visited on the original show ?
How are the planets named ?
- Thread starter TransporterBeam
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Some are places in California: Benicia, Tiburon.
- From the names of real stars: Altair VI, Capella IV, Ceti Alpha V, Rigel II-XII, Izar, etc.
- From other mythology or history: Vulcan, Romulus, Berengaria (wife of Richard I), Sarpeidon, Elba II, Gideon, Janus VI, etc.
- From literary or cultural allusions: Elas & Troyius (Hellas and Troy), Zeon (Zion), etc.
- From place names on Earth or personal names: Benecia, Illyria VI, Sherman's Planet (named for a friend of David Gerrold), possibly Deneva (sometimes a surname)
- From random Greek letters and/or numerals: Omicron Delta, Beta V, Omega IV, Delta IV, 892-IV, etc.
- Out of thin air: Tellar, Andor, Axanar, Coridan, etc.
Christopher's answer may be close to the ways it was done.
Getting more into the process: Basically, the individual writers came up with names for whatever reasons they wanted. Then those names were run past the studio legal department to make sure there were no conflicts with other copyrighted works, corporation names, etc. -- anything that might get someone mad enough to call their lawyers. All names in scripts are vetted in this way. (Which is why character names sometimes get changed from concept to finished production.)
Star Trek used the familiar practice of numbering planets after the home star: Rigel VII, Altair VI, Talos IV, etc. The idea being the first planet closest to the home star is number one and from there outward and upward numerically.
Interesting how this differs from how astronomers designate exoplanets discovered, with small case letters instead of numbers and in order of discovery. For example Iota Horologii a. And the a will quite likely not be the planet closest to the star because we haven't perfected a means to detect smaller terrestrial sized worlds at a distance yet.
Interesting how this differs from how astronomers designate exoplanets discovered, with small case letters instead of numbers and in order of discovery. For example Iota Horologii a. And the a will quite likely not be the planet closest to the star because we haven't perfected a means to detect smaller terrestrial sized worlds at a distance yet.
What??? "Rigel" is our name for Beta Orionis. It's the Arabic word for "foot," as in the foot of Orion the Hunter. A name like Rigel II or Rigel IV or Rigel VII is blatantly the human name for the world, not the local one. (Despite the idiocy of "Broken Bow" assuming that "Rigel" was an alien name that Archer had never heard of.)
Stupid old joke this brings to mind:
"Father," asked the Indian boy, "how do our people come by their names?"
"Well, son," the warrior said, "at the moment a child is born, the father steps outside the lodge and looks to nature. The first thing he sees is what he names his new child."
"I see, father."
"Why do you ask, Two Dogs Fucking?"
"Father," asked the Indian boy, "how do our people come by their names?"
"Well, son," the warrior said, "at the moment a child is born, the father steps outside the lodge and looks to nature. The first thing he sees is what he names his new child."
"I see, father."
"Why do you ask, Two Dogs Fucking?"
More likely, the alternate name Algebar could've become prominent instead. But that still doesn't explain "Broken Bow"'s treatment of "Rigel" as the Vulcan name for the star -- or the great proximity of the Rigel system in that episode, when the real Rigel is quite far away.
A common explanation in fandom and tie-in fiction is that the star in "Broken Bow" is a different Rigel, called Beta Rigel in Star Charts; the remote Rigel VII and Rigel XII from TOS are the real one, Beta Orionis, but the other Rigel planets, the ones implied to be closer to the core of the Federation, are around Beta Rigel. Archer could've been puzzled by the name Rigel for the star in "Broken Bow" because he recognized it was far too close to be the Rigel he knew.
In fact, though, there are multiple stars with the Arabic "Rigel/Rijil" in their names, since it means "foot" and a lot of constellations have "foot" stars. Indeed, Alpha Centauri is also known as Al Rijil or Rigil Kentaurus. There are also several Denebs; it's helpful to assume that the well-known Deneb in TOS is Deneb Kaitos, which resolves the contradiction about Deneb IV in "Encounter at Farpoint" being so new and remote. (Also, just plain Deneb is very, very, VERY far away in reality.)
It's hard to tell if Archer really was puzzled or not. I mean, he simply passed the question to T'Pol without giving any personal input.
This is how it went:
It's not as if Archer doesn't know what "Rigel" means in English. After all, he's likely to know what "sarin" means in English, too. This is of no interest to him. What Archer is interested in is what Rigel means in Klingonese. And that information T'Pol can provide for him, or so he thinks.
And Archer is not puzzled by the answer, either, because he already half expected Rigel to be a Klingon (or rather, common local) name for a star system, having learned from Sato that the word was likely to be a proper noun.
Now, if we had some reason to believe that Hoshi heard the Klingon utter a number of astronomical names, and out of those, she failed to recognize Rigel, then we might have a case for incompetence. But it seems the Klingon did not use any planetary or stellar names at all, apart from those four - it's explicitly said he didn't mention Earth, for example. The four words were apparently the only four words in the whole material that Sato could not translate or attribute a meaning to, suggesting Klaang did not in fact use any other proper names. Sato would then have been fully justified in not trying to assign a meaning to Rigel, certainly not merely because the word happened to be pronounced much the same as an English stellar name - just like she didn't go and assume that "Sarin" referred to a human nerve gas, or "Folia" to a type of human folk music, or "Gelik" to a town in Turkey.
Timo Saloniemi
An aspect not yet mentioned is that it seems absurd to use all these different naming systems. They ought to eliminate either the Greek letter system (e.g. Omicron Theta III) or the star + number system. That way there's some consistency to how the planets are referred to. Of course, if the planet has a proper name given (presumably) by its inhabitants then it also makes sense to use that.
All those double--Greek-letter names are made up... it frustrates me when they present us with a string of Greek letters and say it's a star. What this is based on is real though, the astronomical designations consisting of a Greek letter and the constellation name.
I liked that they got these right so much of the time. They refer to the star in Who Mourns For Adonais as Pollux (except when Kirk mispronounces it "Polacks"!) and Beta Geminorum, the correct astronomical designation.
I liked that they got these right so much of the time. They refer to the star in Who Mourns For Adonais as Pollux (except when Kirk mispronounces it "Polacks"!) and Beta Geminorum, the correct astronomical designation.
That's because Brannon Braga thought it was a name made up for the original series and not an actual star name. Yes, the man is that clueless when it comes to grade school science.
Should've saved that email for posterity...
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