Is the Settlers of Catan board game based on or inspired by the settlers of Kataan planet in the Star Trek episode The Inner Light?

Question

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Inner Light" there is a planet called Kataan. There is a board game called Settlers of Catan. There are many similarities. Is the game directly or indirectly based on the settlement on Kataan?

Answer 1

In this interview with the creator of the game, he says he just came up with a bunch of possible names that "sounded good" and let his family choose; from the way he describes it, it sounds like they probably were just made-up words, although that isn't said explicitly. But in any case, I'm not sure what you mean by "there are many similarities" (I don't see any myself), but presumably he didn't plan any detailed similarities between the game and the episode if there were a bunch of other candidates for the name and he didn't choose which one to use himself.

Why did you choose the name “Catan” for the island?

Originally, the game was supposed to receive the title “The Settlers.” I also like to play at the computer, so I heard of a computer game called “The Settlers.” Somehow I had a queasy feeling about the two games having the same name. I then convinced the editor that, for the sake of distinction, we needed to add some other words to “Settlers.” I wrote a list of about 10 fancy names that sounded good, among them Catan, and asked my friends and family. Most of them were in favor of “Catan.” At the time, I didn’t attach importance to the list and threw it away which was unfortunate, because now I’d really like to know which names competed with “Catan.”