Naming Planets In Science Fiction

It occurred to me that no intelligent species with an Earth-like planet has any reason to name it anything other than EARTH. Not until they start colonizing many worlds that are similar anyway.

Earth just means dirt, you can even look the word up if you like. Humans called our planet Earth, because it was the name of for dirt, which happens to be what this planet is composed of, and on which we live.

If a planet was just an ocean, then we would call it sea.

I use to take issue with Star Trek naming the Romulan homeworld Romulus, but it actually makes sense. Perhaps it was not merely a lack of imagination, even if it was, it's not a bad idea.

If you have dozens of Earth-like worlds, you're not going to name them Earth 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. Because that's boring.

But once you start meeting races all over the galaxy who have planets that are Earth-like, and they name their planet Earth as well... NOW you have a reason for naming your planet a name to specify what you are.

So fictional Earth, inside a crowded universe of fictional alien life, could rightly call Earth-Humania, the original human homeworld.

Except for the fact that other species would have different languages. It might translate to Earth, but not be that word necessarily.

Likewise, the names that various people on this planet for their people; all translate to "Us People."

Yup. To take a Star Trek example, the word for the planet Vulcan in the Vulcan language almost certainly translates literally to either "dirt" or "home". Ditto the word for Romulus in Romulan, although that might be complicated by the fact that the Romulans and Vulcans used to be one people and the Romulans left. (IIRC for Startrek arcana.)

You might want to look up the etymology of the word "earth", you know. As others have noted, even here there are numerous names for the same thing. One of the more common (and, speaking classically, a more proper one) being "Terra". So though the definition would probably translate (given the acknowledged problems with translation and what that means to communication with an alien species) roughly to "earth" (lower case), the variety of possible names is practically infinite....

This post got me all curious about the name of our planet... so I fired up Google translate and listen to a multitude of names for our collective home. Tons! One of my favorites is Zemia. Thats Bulgarian.

adomol said:

This post got me all curious about the name of our planet... so I fired up Google translate and listen to a multitude of names for our collective home. Tons! One of my favorites is Zemia. Thats Bulgarian.

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So pretty! I want to live on Zemia.

I grew up on Terra (I used to live in Brazil). If an alien species were to try to make sense of what Earth was called, they might go with one of the predominant languages. Chinese perhaps? Or probably they'd just dismiss us as the people-who-don't-know-their-own-name and give Earth a completely different name.

Alex said:

Likewise, the names that various people on this planet for their people; all translate to "Us People."

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While that is true, language is a necessary bridge to be crossed when it comes to space opera type fiction.

Star Trek uses universal translator tech, but I prefer not to use that route, since it seems impossible.

Instead, I will use a specific humanoid alien race, that has the rare ability to understand the languages of ANY intelligent race they come across that uses vocal speech.

I don't view this as utterly impossible, since in nature, there are plenty of things that go over and beyond what tech can do. We make nukes, but stars put them to shame for power, and controlled power at that.

Words and letters they would still have to take time to learn the hard way, but vocal speech they could understand as well as speak themselves.

Thus they would be the most important species in the universe, the one that serves as bridge species to all races. They would be the first species you ever see when it comes to face to face contact, since they can understand your language right away.

The only races that wouldn't be as accessible to these guys would be ones that use non-verbal communication (sign language).

Perhaps Aliens would simply call their own planet their word for 'home'?
If they were intelligent enough to travel across space to visit us, they'd probably learn our languages by intercepting media transmissions. I'm sure they'd find 'Earth' an unpretentious title. They would all be fluent by the time they arrived but [assuming it's English] accent would be a laugh - have they been watching 'Downton Abbey' or 'True Detective'?

Media transmissions are only detectable up to about one or two light days. If a transmission is not in a tight beam (such as laser, radar etc. ) then the inverse square law takes its power down so rapidly there is virtually no chance, even at the closest stars, that such transmissions could be detected over the background of radiation from the sun.

adomol said:

This post got me all curious about the name of our planet... so I fired up Google translate and listen to a multitude of names for our collective home. Tons! One of my favorites is Zemia. Thats Bulgarian.

Click to expand...

So "Zemia" means Earth.

What does "zemia" mean?

My favourite attempt to rename the Earth came in the days when the World Wide Web had only about a hundred pages and the internet was just e-mail and newsgroups.

An American women on a SF newsgroup excitedly announced she had a fantastic new name. First she explained that because we know now from Einstein's theory of General Relativity that mass curves space, and therefore we are on the planet in a gravitational well, that this fact should be part of the name.

Also as the biosphere of the Earth nurtures life and in many cultures such a role is represented as feminine that should be there too in the name.

So she proudly announced her new name for the Earth was...

...the MOTHERWELL.

As a Scot that tickled me, as we already had one of them as a town. But it felt weird giving the whole planet the same name as that place

I think I suggested that if that was the case, then we should therefore rename the moon 'Wishaw'.

“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.” - Asimov

I have a hard time coming up with names for planets, but sometimes one just comes to me, and at other times, I try to find a word with a secret symbolic meaning that I want to use in order to convey what the planet might be like.

Earth = Tellus = Terra
Gaia is a slightly different route.

In SF planets tend to be named
1) After our name for the star / sun (as in observations) Arcturus III etc.
2) Similar to main species / race name
3) The alien word that means Earth or Home
4) After a discoverer or someone important (San Francisco, Carolina)
5) After some event.
6) After some Earth place or Group that settled it (c.f. New York, New England, New Jersey, Novia Scotia, New Zealand etc)
7) Some product (Brazil is after name in Portuguese of a kind of wood, no connection to Celtic Hy Brazil)
8) something random

Yes, I often use the name for the star I have created and then designate the order of planets with 1, 2, 3 or I, II, III etc.

Anne Spackman said:

I have a hard time coming up with names for planets, but sometimes one just comes to me, and at other times, I try to find a word with a secret symbolic meaning that I want to use in order to convey what the planet might be like.

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I used to kinda struggle at this - I was always trying to find layers of meaning in a name, whether it be a character, a starship, a star or a planet...anything!

However I then discovered how to tap into my subconscious (i.e. think about said thing to be named for a while, then clear my mind and see what is the first word that gets fished up ) Quite frankly the results were incredible, in terms of the very deep connections that I (eventually!) found and the fact that generally a large number of such names felt 'natural'. I admit it doesn't always work, but then that's what re-writing and editing are for.