Why switch to Kirk from Pike?

[Jackson_Roykirk]

It also goes to Kirk addressing Amanda as "Mrs. Sarek" in "Journey to Babel" as being the rough equivalent of calling my wife "Mrs. Bob".

Well, If your name was just plain old "Bob", with no other surname attached to it, the "Mrs. Bob" would probably be close to acceptable...think of it as saying "Wife of Bob", or "Wife of Sarek".

In Iceland, your 'last' name depends on your father's first name, NOT his 'last' name; so if an Icelander's first name is John, and his fathers name was Thorvlad Ericson, then his full name would be John Thorvaldson -- meaning "Thorvald's son" -- NOT John Ericson. And to follow through with that, his father's father's first name would have been Eric [Something] (hence his father's last name being Ericson).

The same thing occurs with girls, but you add "dottir" to the end of her father's name -- e.g., Jane Thorvalddottir which literally means the "daughter of Thorvald'

 

[Timo]

True enough. And Klingons apparently like to use patronymics exactly like this.

However, we don't know if Vulcans use patronymics. The "son of" routine was used in the ceremony in ST3, but the secular Vulcan language might well feature the concept of surnames. After all, Amanda did have a "Vulcan name" which Kirk was supposed to be using instead of saying "Mrs Sarek", heavily suggesting that Amanda had acquired a Vulcan surname through his marriage (although other interpretations are possible). That wouldn't happen if Vulcans used patronymics, as Amanda wasn't the daughter of a Vulcan.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

It also goes to Kirk addressing Amanda as "Mrs. Sarek" in "Journey to Babel" as being the rough equivalent of calling my wife "Mrs. Bob".

Well, there is precedent for such a thing. In Vietnamese, people actually are addressed by their given names in contexts where English speakers would use the surname. For instance, if someone were named Lam Hang Bian (to borrow a character name from an unsold story of mine), Lam would be her family name and Bian her given name, but she would still be addressed as "Ms. Bian." If, say, Kirk's name followed Vietnamese naming conventions, he would be Kirk Tiberius James and would be referred to as Captain James. (This is because most people in Vietnam use the same 20 or so common surnames, mainly the surnames of the 16 royal families. About 40% of the people in Vietnam have the surname Nguyen because that was the last ruling dynasty. So since so many people have the same family name, it makes more sense to address them by their given names.)

Actually Vietnamese women keep their names when they marry, so the "Mrs. Bob" thing wouldn't happen, but the point is that there's no single universal rule for how names are handled in various languages.

 

[Timo]

Good and interesting points!

...Although at this point it should be emphasized that whatever the correct Vulcan practice is, "Mrs. Sarek" was clearly unacceptable. Amanda only let it pass because she knew Kirk couldn't manage the proper form of address in practice.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DrTaylor]

James T. Kirk
Jean-Luc Picard
Benjamin Sisko
Kathryn Janeway

Jonathan Archer.. d'oh!

 

[ClayinCA]

Good and interesting points!

...Although at this point it should be emphasized that whatever the correct Vulcan practice is, "Mrs. Sarek" was clearly unacceptable. Amanda only let it pass because she knew Kirk couldn't manage the proper form of address in practice.

Timo Saloniemi

McCoy can't even manage that much - ironically enough, he pronounces it "Surak." He then goes on to mispronounce "sehlat," which always made me wonder whether DeForest Kelley legitimately wasn't sure of the pronunciation or whether he was making a deliberate choice to have McCoy be unable to say Vulcan words.

 

[Maurice]

Could be. Does he say it right after Amanda mentions the creature? I'm not recalling.

 

[ToddPence]

Well, remember Kelley also had pronunciation problems with the name of the monster in "A Private Little War", so they had to change it from "Gumato" to "Mugato".

 

[Christopher]

Kelley seemed to fumble pronunciations a lot. I recall him pronouncing "crystalline" like "crys-TAL-in." But then, Nimoy mispronounced "cryogenic" as "seerogenic" (he probably misread it as "cyrogenic") in "Journey to Babel." And then there's Shatner's "sabo-taadge."

 

[Captain Robert April]

Keep in mind that Jane Wyatt's line and De Kelley's lines were both shown in closeup, i.e., they were shot separately. It's possible that Kelley's responding to a script girl's pronounciation, and God only knows how that came out.

McCoy misprouncing alien words did become a running gag, though. Even cropped up in TMP:

"I understand you were undergoing the 'Kulaneer' discipline."

"If you are referring to the Kohlinahr, Doctor, you are correct."

 

[Timo]

The perfectly logical explanation to all that has already been presented here: McCoy hails from Michigan. The "Southern drawl" is just his attempt at hiding the fact that he's drunk as a skunk most of the time.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ClayinCA]

Hadn't come across that before - that's hysterical!

 

[EEE]

...Although at this point it should be emphasized that whatever the correct Vulcan practice is, "Mrs. Sarek" was clearly unacceptable. Amanda only let it pass because she knew Kirk couldn't manage the proper form of address in practice.

So she accepted it.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Um, she didn't exactly let it pass. She insisted Kirk call her Amanda because, "you couldn't pronounce the Vulcan name." That's not accepting it, that's letting Kirk off the hook by offering him an alternative.

 

[Timo]

Also, what the Vulcan society accepts and what Amanda thinks are not exactly one and the same, it would appear.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

That statement is true.

 

[Christopher]

This statement is false.

(Illogical... illogical... Norman... coordinate...)

 

[USS Excelsior]

I don't think in the original pilot that he was even referred to as Pike, they may not have even made a name up yet for the Captain at the time and just retconned Pike when they made the Menagerie.

 

[ClayinCA]

No, he's referred to in the script and onscreen as Pike. I've never heard of a TV series doing an entire episode of a show without any name for its lead character (unless you count The Prisoner, but even then they called him 'Number Six').

 

[Christopher]

I don't think in the original pilot that he was even referred to as Pike, they may not have even made a name up yet for the Captain at the time and just retconned Pike when they made the Menagerie.

He identified himself to the illusory colonists on Talos as "Captain Christopher Pike, United Space Ship Enterprise." When trying to speak to the Talosians, he said, "My name is Christopher Pike, commander of the space vehicle Enterprise, from the stellar group at the other end of this galaxy" (talk about your hyperbole). He's referred to as "Captain Pike" during the briefing-room scene and as "Mr. Pike" in the Orion slave girl illusion.