Romulan & Chinese names…is there a 5th level?

[Anters]

On Fandom, it states that “Many Romulans have a self-chosen "fourth name" that they keep a secret all their lives, rarely revealed to others.”
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Romulan_nomenclature

Spoiler: Picard Season 1

Given the Zhat Vash are a secret society with a society, doesn’t it make sense that they would have their own secret names which they use only amongst themselves? This would mean that some Romulans may have 5 names.

What do you think?

On a different point, do you think it likely that Roddenberry copied the Romulan naming conventions from the Chinese?

Because, in practice they seem identical, because Chinese people often have different names, depending on context.

For example, my grandfather was given a name by his parents when he was born, and a generation name to match his brothers, but he was given a different name by his teachers when he studied Chinese, and then when he went to work he had a business name. He had four names. Although this is less common today, it’s definitely a part of Chinese culture.

Chinese names also have specific meanings in the same way as Romulans. e.g. “Ael" means “swift & winged” in Romulan, and “Ming Jie” means “wise & distinguished” in Chinese.

 

[Tosk]

“Many Romulans have a self-chosen "fourth name" that they keep a secret all their lives, rarely revealed to others.”

I wonder where that comes from, there's no attribution on that note.

 

[1001001]

On Fandom, it states that “Many Romulans have a self-chosen "fourth name" that they keep a secret all their lives, rarely revealed to others.”
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Romulan_nomenclature

Spoiler: Picard Season 1

Given the Zhat Vash are a secret society with a society, doesn’t it make sense that they would have their own secret names which they use only amongst themselves? This would mean that some Romulans may have 5 names.

What do you think?

On a different point, do you think it likely that Roddenberry copied the Romulan naming conventions from the Chinese?

Because, in practice they seem identical, because Chinese people often have different names, depending on context.

For example, my grandfather was given a name by his parents when he was born, and a generation name to match his brothers, but he was given a different name by his teachers when he studied Chinese, and then when he went to work he had a business name. He had four names. Although this is less common today, it’s definitely a part of Chinese culture.

Chinese names also have specific meanings in the same way as Romulans. e.g. “Ael" means “swift & winged” in Romulan, and “Ming Jie” means “wise & distinguished” in Chinese.

PLEASE...you cannot post any spoilers or openly discuss STP without spoiler warnings.

It was a very mild one to be sure, but you basically started the whole conversation with it.

We have an entire Picard Forum where you can discuss the show until your heart's content.

 

[Christopher]

On a different point, do you think it likely that Roddenberry copied the Romulan naming conventions from the Chinese?

Roddenberry had nothing to do with it. Paul Schneider created the Romulans, and he just based them on ancient Romans -- the only named Romulan in "Balance of Terror" was Decius, and then "The Enterprise Incident" by D.C. Fontana gave us Subcommander Tal. There were very, very few Romulan names in TOS, while the movies gave us only a couple more -- Caithlin Dar, which sounds Celtic, and Nanclus, going back to the original Roman pattern. Romulans in TNG rarely had more than one name, generally going for Vulcan-like, K-heavy names like Tomalak and Chulak, though eventually some were given two names, like Alidar Jarok or Telek R'Mor, in which case their names were treated in the Western fashion, just a given name followed by a surname.

The naming convention discussed on the Memory Beta page you mention was created by novelist Diane Duane in her Rihannsu novels. Onscreen Star Trek has never acknowledged any of it until just this week in Picard: "The Impossible Box," which established that Romulans have "true names" they only share with those they gave their hearts to. It's similar to Duane's "fourth name" idea and probably inspired by it, but as far as we know, it's only a third name, since no onscreen Romulan to date has been given more than two.

 

[Anters]

PLEASE...you cannot post any spoilers or openly discuss STP without spoiler warnings.

It was a very mild one to be sure, but you basically started the whole conversation with it.

We have an entire Picard Forum where you can discuss the show until your heart's content.

Sorry I had no idea it was a spoiler...I thought it was common Trek lore on Romulans. I was just interested in talking about Romulans, not the Picard series. In any case, in Picard they get first mentioned in episode 1, which was more than 2-weeks ago, so doesn't that mean they can be mentioned without needing spoiler warnings?

 

[Christopher]

Anyway, I don't see why members of a spy organization or the like would need extra personal names. Code names or aliases, sure, but that would be for work. No reason to bring it home at night and actually add a whole other personal name.

 

[Anters]

Anyway, I don't see why members of a spy organization or the like would need extra personal names. Code names or aliases, sure, but that would be for work. No reason to bring it home at night and actually add a whole other personal name.

The Chinese have names which they use only in a business context. You're looking at it purely from the perspective of a culture that only has one given name. In other cultures, having multiple names isn't a big deal...it's de rigueur.

 

[1001001]

In any case, in Picard they get first mentioned in episode 1, which was more than 2-weeks ago, so doesn't that mean they can be mentioned without needing spoiler warnings?

6 Months!

 

[Christopher]

The Chinese have names which they use only in a business context.

Yes, Western-style given names that they adopt for the purpose of doing business with English speakers. It's something they assume for their job, something meant to be used among outsiders, while they use their real Chinese names in private with their friends and family. This is what I'm saying. Spies would not give themselves "secret names which they use only amongst themselves." That's getting it backward. If you were a spy, then the name you'd keep secret would be the real name you already have. Any additional cryptonym or alias you adopted would be public, to conceal your real name.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Spoiler

I'm not convinced that Narek or Hrai Yun (his "true name") is using anything other than made-up names to trick Soji. Unless he thinks she can detect lies, at which point his true name might be Hrai Yun, but it doesn't really matter, since that's likely not in any database anywhere.

I wonder if there's an etymological connection between the Romulan true names and the Vulcan "unpronounceable" given names/surnames that we've never heard.

 

[Anters]

Yes, Western-style given names that they adopt for the purpose of doing business with English speakers. It's something they assume for their job, something meant to be used among outsiders, while they use their real Chinese names in private with their friends and family. This is what I'm saying. Spies would not give themselves "secret names which they use only amongst themselves." That's getting it backward. If you were a spy, then the name you'd keep secret would be the real name you already have. Any additional cryptonym or alias you adopted would be public, to conceal your real name.

No, traditionally, they were given Chinese names, not Western-style given names. The latter is a recent cultural phenomenon and they use those names outside of business as well. I'm talking about a completely different practice. The Chinese civilisation is in its 4719th year and they've only been doing business with westerners for 500 years...this practice I'm talking about predates contact with the west.

For example, the emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty was born in 1082 with the name Zhao Ji. His temple name was Huizong and his posthumous name was Tishen Hedao Junlie Xungong Shengwen Rende Xianci Xianxiao Huangdi. He had other names as well for other contexts.

The Chinese are an incredibly secretive people, and that starts with names...my grandfather would have considered it none of his workmates business to know what his family name was. He would never have divulged it because the Chinese attitude defaults to one of privacy defined by context.

The common thread is that in Chinese tradition people adopted different names for different contexts of their lives, AND people outside these contexts often had no idea what other names a person had. Certainly almost know one knew my grandfather's family name.

Also to be clear: they're not nicknames or titles, they were different bonafide given names.

Spies would not give themselves "secret names which they use only amongst themselves." That's getting it backward. If you were a spy, then the name you'd keep secret would be the real name you already have. Any additional cryptonym or alias you adopted would be public, to conceal your real name.

I hope you can see why your comment misunderstands what's going on: if names are only used with certain people in certain contexts, then by definition no one outside that context will know ones other names, thereby making them 'secret'. Therefore, if one were in a spy organisation, for sure know one outside the organisation will know your spy name, because they wouldn't even know you were a spy to begin with.

Also, if a Romulan's private family name wasn't a matter of public record (as is the case with my grandfather's), then it would be secret from the spy organisation as well...unless they actively sought to uncover it.

 

[Christopher]

^Okay, thanks for clarifying about Chinese naming customs. I don't see any evidence that Romulans do anything of the sort, though. After all, we've seen plenty of Romulan spies before, and none of them ever used any different names with one another than they used with everyone else. "The Impossible Box" is the first mention we've ever heard in canon of Romulans having hidden names, and the third name was described as one shared with the person you give your heart to -- personal, not professional.

 

[Khan Jr]

Which makes me wonder how Romulans actually get their third names. It seems a reasonable supposition that parents & family could pick the first two for children. Since the third's so intimate, maybe a person makes up his own, but if that's all there is to it it wouldn't be weighty. Along the lines of the Zhal Makh, there could be some private ritual to come to your unvarying true name.