I'd seen a reference to "Nicole Janeway," but I somehow missed the part about that being an intermediate name, because of a collision with the name of a famous person.
The "K" Sound in Captain
- Thread starter RaisedEyeBrow
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Which, of course, was named after the idiom "the real McCoy," which had been in use since the late 19th century. (James Blish novelized "The Man Trap" under the title "The Unreal McCoy," which may have been the working title of the script draft he was sent.)
By the way, you can use one post to quote and reply to everybody.
Thank you that.
I was just going by what Trekker09 said in post #9...
I don't know about effeminate, but I do remember people saying that the name Bruce was an epithet for a gay male and that is why the show didn't use it. But not an official reason like you saying, but was of a rumor that was circulating.
Please use the multi-quote function, rather than posting 7 times in a row.
Like this.
Thanks.
Thank you for that. And that sure will help me with my long string of replies.
However, I'm going to stop for now with this reply because I don't want my head to start to spin with all these replies. 
Which I was refuting by pointing out that it's far too widespread to be attributed to a single category of writers.
The traditional stereotype of gay men prior to modern times was that they were effeminate. The presumption was that anyone attracted to men must therefore be feminine in personality, which of course is not how being gay works, but the people who believed in the stereotype didn't know that.
Ahhh, that's very interesting. Also, I wonder if that's the case with the more famous actress and singer, Vanessa L. Williams. Because there's another actress who I think came on the scene before VLW simply named, Vanessa Williams, therefore, eventually, the more famous actress and singer had to add the "L" as her middle initial to distinguish herself from the other Vanessa Williams.
Also, what you're saying about how the captain's name of the show Enterprise was Jackson Archer, seems to indicate to me that there may have been an unspoken and perhaps subconscious pattern of including the "K" sound in Star Trek captains' names.
And as Mr. Spock would say: Fascinating.
To me, Robert April just sounds to feminine for a man's name.... (And no offense to any man who has that name.
)Kind of like coming up with internet forum screen names.
Writers often give a lot of thought as to their characters' names. Alliteration is important, even if more subliminal to most readers. And a "K" sound is strong. (Both Pike and then Kirk were chosen over Winter and April in earlier drafts.) IIRC, "The Making of Star Trek" by Whitfield & Roddenberry has several memos about character names, including alternate Vulcan names.
LOL
Well, I'm glad she did because Kathryn sounds more regal, Plus, it reminds me of the actress Kathryn Hepburn, and I think that Janeway had some elements of Kathryn Hepburn in that character.
Interesting. But there goes that "K" sound pattern again.
I see. Also, that reminds me of what Mel Brooks did at the end of Blazing Saddles. lol
So, I guess you're right. Don't forget that Tuvok (with a "K" sound) was Janeway's original first officer/second in command before Chakotay took over.
LOL
Well, I'm glad she did because Kathryn sounds more regal, Plus, it reminds me of the actress Kathryn Hepburn, and I think that Janeway had some elements of Kathryn Hepburn in that character.
Interesting. But there goes that "K" sound pattern again.
I see. Also, that reminds me of what Mel Brooks did at the end of Blazing Saddles. lol
Don't forget that Tuvok (with a "K" sound) was Janeway's original first officer/second in command before Chakotay took over.
Okay you just did it again. Please confine your responses to one post with multi-quotes. And remember you don’t have to specifically address every point individually.
I’d like to suggest you take some time to review the posting rules for this board, pinned at the top of this forum.
Thanks.
That stereotype also fits hand-in-glove with a mindset and worldview derived from a pure "strict-father" family model, in which it is considered not merely a man's right to (1) father children and (2) to seek dominance at all times, but his duty.
Don't forget that Tuvok (with a "K" sound) was Janeway's original first officer/second in command before Chakotay took over.
No, he was her security chief. Her first officer was Commander Cavit, who was killed in "Caretaker." That's why she appointed a former enemy, Chakotay, as her first officer. She would've had no reason to do that if Tuvok had been her XO -- which would have been unlikely given that his rank at the time was lieutenant.
I think initially the notion was probably just the simple fact that names with Ks in them are literally striking. You have to physically strike the roof of your mouth to make that sound. It's so appealing for your protagonist that all but 2 of the TOS central crew had it in their name, the only exceptions being names they clearly wanted to deliberately sound unusually foreign, & went with long U sounds, for Sulu & Uhura, because of the rarity of western names with long U sounds featured as prominently
The knack for it was so commonplace, I'm pretty sure that it's one of the reasons that the parody film Airplane made its main character's name Ted Stryker, as a way to ridicule that
The knack for it was so commonplace, I'm pretty sure that it's one of the reasons that the parody film Airplane made its main character's name Ted Stryker, as a way to ridicule that
Even if Tuvok had been her XO, I think Janeway would have needed to be careful in placing Chakotay not too low on the command chain - it wouldn't have been good, had the Maquis not felt represented at the highest command levels. Chakotay as 2nd officer might have done, but not much lower than that. Also because Tuvok would have been a spy from the Maquis perspective.
I don't think they chose them for the sounds. Roddenberry chose "Sulu" because it's a sea in the Philippines that he saw as "pan-Asian" because he incorrectly believed it abutted multiple Asian countries (instead of just two). And "Uhura" came about because Nichelle Nichols was reading a book called Uhuru at her audition, or something like that, and GR just liked the word. The fact that they both have U sounds in them is coincidental.
Airplane! was a loose remake/spoof of the 1957 disaster movie Zero Hour!, using its overall plot outline and many of its verbatim lines of dialogue. Ted Stryker was the name of Dana Andrews's character in the original film. Although Airplane! may well have been mocking what a cliched hero-type name it was.
I don't really think about that as phonics isn't really...something I consider when I come up with names...
Honestly Sulu is the one name that really bothers me.
With Uhura I can accept that before the advent of the internet it might have been difficult for somebody living in America to get hold of knowledge of what actual African family names are like, especially since they probably didn't have a precise culture/country of origin for her character. And at least it's based on an actual Swahili word that apparently is used as a given name.
But I don't think that it would have been that difficult on the West Coast of the United States, in the 1960s to get hold of a name that's actually from an Asian language/country. Probably all you needed was opening up a phone book.
And what is "Pan Asian" even supposed to mean? What? In the 23d century all of East Asia became a melting pot and decided to invent new family names? Yes the Sulu Sea, but still.
Chekov (yes, while apparently not the right transliteration) and Scott (while yes, a bit on the nose) aren't some "Pan-European" creations either.
With Uhura I can accept that before the advent of the internet it might have been difficult for somebody living in America to get hold of knowledge of what actual African family names are like, especially since they probably didn't have a precise culture/country of origin for her character. And at least it's based on an actual Swahili word that apparently is used as a given name.
But I don't think that it would have been that difficult on the West Coast of the United States, in the 1960s to get hold of a name that's actually from an Asian language/country. Probably all you needed was opening up a phone book.
And what is "Pan Asian" even supposed to mean? What? In the 23d century all of East Asia became a melting pot and decided to invent new family names? Yes the Sulu Sea, but still.
Chekov (yes, while apparently not the right transliteration) and Scott (while yes, a bit on the nose) aren't some "Pan-European" creations either.
No, they knew perfectly well that Uhuru was the proper form of the name, since, again, Roddenberry specifically got the idea from the book called Uhuru that Nichelle Nichols was reading at the time. But they agreed that the name would sound harsh to American ears and "softened" it by changing it to Uhura. It wasn't ignorance, it was a conscious choice to Anglicize a well-known Swahili name (used as both a given name and a surname).
Although I wonder if maybe part of the reason was to avoid having it end in the same vowel as "Sulu."
The idea was to leave his heritage unspecified so that people of all Asian heritages could see themselves represented by the character. Since he and Uhura were the only representatives for their entire continents, there was a burden placed on them to represent their entire continents, in the way that one European-descended character out of five or six doesn't have to be. Which is the problem with tokenism.
Of course, it kind of backfired with Sulu, since the character's unspecific ethnicity meant that everyone assumed he shared his actor's Japanese ancestry. Vonda McIntyre gave him the given name Hikaru, and a number of novel and comics writers gave him stories that were rooted in a Japanese heritage, sometimes in quite a stereotyped way (like the DC Comics issue that had him get drawn into his family's honor duel fought with giant robots). Which doesn't really fit the show at all, since in "Shore Leave" the guy was afraid of a samurai. Why would a Japanese person be afraid of a samurai, one of the country's revered national icons of nobility and honor? It's like having an Englishman panic at the sight of Sir Lancelot.
Hmm... I wonder how the tie-ins would have been different if James Hong had gotten the role of Sulu.
Yeah I know I read that the first time it was mentioned in the thread but from what I googled I couldn't find an example of it being used as a last name.
I don't deny that "representation" might have been the point, but it just comes off as stupid to me.
I don't deny that. As I said, it's a symptom of the larger problem of having a mostly white cast with just one token each for other ethnicities, creating an unfair burden for them to be universally representative. I'm not saying it was right, I'm just discussing why it was done.
Progress is always incremental. A step that's inclusive and forward-looking by the standards of its time will often look backward and prejudiced by the standards of a later time. Indeed, that's exactly the way it should be, because it means that we've advanced even further since then.
