Yes! I don't want to sound like I ripped off anything, but I have read the Culture series repeatedly, it was an influence on a lot of what I write. That and Lensmen. It's slightly different in that Super Earth/Terra Mater is like a "one of a kind" thing. It's not a "type" of world it's this like Great Wall of China situation.
Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply you'd ripped anything off, I'm running into a lot of "Great minds beat me to the idea" in my own work as well. Good to meet another Culture fan though, welcome aboard.
"Earthie"? "Earthite" "Eartharine" "Earthan" "Earthalino" Earthalina "Earth-ish" (People who live on the moon, and on space stations in Earth orbit I would think to be considered Earth-ish)
My suggestion would be a universal term for humans in general, or whatever species have evolved out of humans, like castes or something. Like humans in general would be called, like, "Mankind" or "Man" (note the capitalization) and then there would be classes or castes of Mankind like the I dunno the "Lol Caste" who broke off as a race from normal comedians and became their own species of sarcastic assholes with HBO contracts (call them the Sons of Maher ), and the "Warmaker Caste" who broke off from soldiers and became the de facto military or knightly orders of Mankind's empire, and the "Forgebreaker Caste" who specialize in building things, engineering, being artisans and so on, etc.
Yeah, I just noticed that. I guess I'm so used to things being named after people's last names rather than their first, I totally spaced on one of the biggest exceptions.
No worries, I'm just a big Amerigo Vespucci fan boy because Columbus gets far too much of the credit despite contributing nothing particularly intellectual or heroic to the effort that was his failed attempt to outflank to Ottoman Empire.
I agree. How dare Italian immigrants use him to try to gain legitimacy and better living conditions when arriving in The New World.
Amerigo Vespucci was also Italian, the one who first realised what it was, first map of north america, and he wasn't a brutal slaver. Columbus's legacy they were using was the legacy of a man who accidentally discovered the wrong thing, didn't realise until he was told, pick up some sweet slave money, and then died denying that he had ever been wrong anyway. Couldn't they have just Caesar like the rest of us?
Tell me about it. Asian names come family name first (Kim Jong Un is the son of Kim Jong Il and the grandson of Kim Il Sung), but I've got a number of students who sport the Japanese version of where I can't tell if they've got their names Western or Asian style, and can never remember which is which.
"...lonely, the way of the necromancer, to know too much. Lacrimae mondare, the tears of the world. The days of our kind are num-bere-ed. The spirits of the wood and stream grow silent... " - Merlin
No. It's America, dammit. We need our own, and we don't care that everyone looks askance at the fact that we gonna' do it our own way and buck tradition. Also, it needs to come with a large Coke and a side of fries (chips to you lot) that can be super-sized for just 25 cents more. ETA: Apropos of nothing, just yesterday I learned the identity of a strange object that I see on my drive between our house in Moca and our condo in Caguas. From highway PR-22 you can see this thing that looks like a bizarre alien construction, like a transmitter array for some poor souls who got lost on their way to the Magellanic Cloud. It's huge. HUGE-huge. You see it from a high point on the highway, which is a ways away from the coast, jutting up. It's this thing, the Colón Statue in Arecibo. In Spanish, Christopher Columbus is Cristóbal Colón. See those mountains in the background that are almost the same color as the clouds where the two meet? That's where the highway runs whence I see this colossus.
Well, we certainly do have a complicated relationship with him here on the island. He's that guy you met a long time ago and, oh, what a sexy accent, and against your better judgment you hook up with him, and then he's all trying to claim your house as his house, and then you find out that he got a hold of the title paperwork, and yes, now his name is on the fucking title, and you never authorized that, and so you're dealing with that when a couple months later there's this crippling burning sensation when you urinate... Yeah, that guy... It was a whole thing. Latinos, culturally speaking, are not a people who fear ostentation, and still, no one wanted it here on the island. Arecibo isn't even one of the cities that lays claim to being where Colón landed. Those would be the rival cities of Aguada and Aguadilla (I was born in the latter). Finally, Arecibo took it in the hopes that it would serve as a touristy thing to see and help improve their slumped economy.
Hmmmm... still trying to figure this thread out. Personally I like the world Terran or Terra, and I really don't care what people a thousand years from now will be calling this world, or a million when our society is dead and buried and a new one arises out of the ashes. It happened to the Lizardfolk and it will happen to us. And Terra sounds cooler than Earth and Terran sounds much more menacing then Earthling. Earthling sounds like something an alien would use to make fun of us. Where Terran can be used to inspire fear through out the galaxy. "Don't fuck with the Terran Empire, or we will come and terrorize your pitiful planet, by selling you useless life insurance policies,"
I'm left to wonder if the dynamic you intone above isn't part of the larger dynamic of Latin is the Language of Strange and Mysterious Things™ constantly foisted by Hollywood and literature in general. Ever notice how anything occult happens in Latin? Also, ever notice how Hollywood makes a blanket trope out of Ancient People Speak with British Accents Because American Accents Sound Too Plain to American Ears™?
DAYUM! You need to find different bars to hang out in! You need a little less excitement in your life. Maybe you should try the local Knights of Columbus . . . just sayin'
Cum Lucibus Gladiis Proscriptae Erunt Tum Soli Proscripti Lucibus Gladiis Habebunt (When laser swords are outlawed, only outlaws will have laser swords) EDIT:: whoops, this thing is on its third page and i quoted the first. >_>
So how humans call Earth Terra you think they would call an ocean world Altum? Altum, by the way, means "the deep, the sea". And an interaction might be like this? The Altumer scowled at the Terran. "Get off our planet you filthy land scum." The Terran laughed. "Sure thing, fish breath."
It may have a silly sound to it, but if we're talking about characters using established terms from their own language, "Earthing" is about as standard as it get, though every species on earth is technically an Earthling, so "Human" or maybe "Sapiens" might make more sense. It would really depend on the story. In fact, everything we're talking about here depends drastically on the story. You're right; it's trite to automatically use "Terra", but depending on the mythology, it might make the most sense. There are several reasons it grew to prominence in sci-fi the first place and reasons it became a staple. If alien species were aware of Earth thousands of years ago, they very well might use a term from a now-dead language. Ancient Egyptian or Aztec would be good candidates too, if anyone happens to speak either. Of course Thor would call Earth Midgard. Why wouldn't he? Did Asgardians teach that word to the Norse or the other way around? I don't know, but Latin, the most widely spoken language on Earth for a millennium or so, and not coincidentally the closest thing we've ever had to a global universal language, works in several fictional situations. Either aliens learned it a long time ago, and we just have to deal with the moniker, or the many peoples of Earth got out into space and decided it was a less contentious term than the English or Chinese or Portuguese or whichever word for Earth. Also, as has been touched on already, egghead scientists like to name things in Latin and Greek, so we get stuck with a lot of each by the people who invent, discover or catalog things. It just has to make sense. If English-speaking humans from 21st century Earth travel elsewhere, I think they're likely to use the terms they use at home, like you said. If 10,000 years of future history have passed, on the other hand, any number of things might have caused wild changes in terminology, including made-up crazy alien words we never would have used had they not been imposed by invaders. It's happened repeatedly on Earth. A lot of Native Americans use the terms "Indian" and "American Indian", for instance. Even the term "Native American" has nothing to do with any native language.
I honestly always assumed that due to genetic engineering and simple eugenics, speciation would lead to different breeds of humanity emerging, that while still interfertile were completely separate groups with their own names. Collectively referred to as Man or Mankind, and planet names not really factoring in per se, but at heart different groups. Like well, for example I said normal humans would be called Pristines, descended from the original breed of Mankind, but there are at least a thousand other breeds, "the Thousand Paths" that humanity has taken over the millennia. Now of course, this is set in like the thirty-first millennium (30,000 A.D. and forward) as it would take countless centuries to get there, but I think it would work.
