We refer to beings from Betazed as betazoids, from Vulcan as vulcans, from Romulus as romulans, etc... Why are we referred to consistently as humans and not earthlings or earthans?
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We don't refer to the Klingons as "Kronos-eons" or "Kronoslings" either. So I guess it is like not refering to the Dutch as "Netherlanders" - the name of the race was chosen independently of the name of the planet (country) they came from. It is probably also to distinguish us from the other sentient inhabitants:
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The Universal Translator is really the root cause of this confusion. The languages for these various cultures may simply lack a specific secondary word to describe being from that culture. For example, we Humans will describe ourselves as belonging to a planet or country. (Earthling, Martian, so on.) It is conceivable that not all alien cultures will follow the same structure. A culture that lacks gods, for example, may lack a word to distinguish between those gods and 'normal' people. Or, a culture with particularly cruel gods might deem themselves unworthy of a collective title. Still other cultures may not hold tradition with as much value and have self-selected a title that is easier to remember and which requires no knowledge of their history to understand. Cultures that lack this noun, would lack any species designation beyond a scientific one. They may simply say, in their own tongue, "Of a location", like how the Bajorans say they are "of Bajor." And indeed, that's what the suffix "an" means. Including the 'an' in Human. Additionally, not all languages have compatible sounds for the human ear/mouth. While not true of Vulcan, and probably also therefore Romulan, the language of Betazoid is a bit of a mystery. And even in Vulcan, the correct name of the people is altered to match the mythological god by the Universal Translator to make it easier for humans to remember. Much of how the UT would need to work would require this kind of tokenization of proper names. Many practices are named for people, like pasteurization. Imagine a practice unknown to humanity, and named for a person in a tongue that exists in an audio range beyond human hearing. | ||||
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It's a matter of language. If the alien is speaking English, then surely he would use the established term "human" for our race. If not, then either it's translated or left gibberish. If left gibberish, we don't know what was said. If translated, it's the translator's choice between the alternatives(whether to go for literal or figurative translations). if you go for the former you may have words like earthling, but that kind of translation is usually not considered good. | |||
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