[tlhIngan Hol] I h-a-t-e transliteration

Felix Malmenbeck felixm at kth.se
Mon Apr 15 06:37:37 PDT 2019


> And don't get me started on Romulus and Remus...

KGT mentions that the names «romuluS» and «rIymuS» are based on the Federation Standard name for these planets.

This is presumably a reference to the Romulan names established in the Rihannsu series:
ch'Rihan and ch'Havran

My own pet theory is that, because the Romulans' Vulcan ancestry was a point of shame for the Vulcans, those high-ranking Vulcans who knew about it used code names for them.
After all, we learned in Star Trek XI that at least one of the commonly Romulan languages is hard to distinguish from Vulcan, so using ch'Rihan and ch'Havran might have given too much of a clue.

The name Romulus may have been chosen after the alternative name "Rom'laas" was overheard on radio chatter. Perhaps Rom'laas is a Reman word, or one sufficiently removed from its Vulcan roots as to not sound Vulcan?

This may then have been approximated to Romulus, and Remus may  have been named accordingly.
This may also have been based on the Roman-esque culture they had at the time; perfect to fool those gullible humans.

Orion is a curious case, as the Klingons almost certainly encountered the Orions before humans did.
Perhaps they used to call it something more inspired by an indigenous name, but then changed it due to interaction with the Federation.
This would be similar to how Japanese used to refer to Spain as ??? (which was borrowed from the Chinese ??? (Xibanyá), which in turn was borrowed from the Latin Hispania), but now calls it ???? (Supein) due to anglophonic influences.

//loghaD

________________________________
From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces at lists.kli.org> on behalf of De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2019 8:12:12 AM
To: tlhIngan-Hol
Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] I h-a-t-e transliteration



On Sun, 14 Apr 2019 at 02:05, Daniel Dadap <daniel at dadap.net<mailto:daniel at dadap.net>> wrote:
There's actually a whole class of canonical words that bug me precisely because they're obviously transliterations of proper nouns that originated on Earth. I'm talking about {DenIb}, {reghuluS}, and {'orayya'}. Okay, it makes sense for Humans to call people Denebians, Regulans, and Orions if they come from Deneb, Regulus, or the general direction of Orion compared to Earth, but why would Klingons use those names? It's hard to think of an in-universe explanation that makes sense. Was all of the Klingon Empire's early contact with these people mediated by Earth or the Federation? Are those names actually based on native names, and they just coincidentally sound like names out of Earth's astronomical charts? And don't get me started on Romulus and Remus...

It's established Star Trek canon that the Olympian gods are real, so that at least gives a way to explain some of the naming.

--
De'vID
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