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I just finished watching the episode "Deadlock". Toward the end, Vidiians board the ship to steal organs. Oddly, they know the name used for every species on the ship.

That they know what an Ocampa is a bit surprising since most of them live underground for generations, but it's still believable. After all, they do share the same quadrant. That they know what humans are is odder, but still believable. The Voyager crew might have used that term to introduce themselves in the past. However, how do they know what a Vulcan is?

When they scan Tuvok, they say he's a Vulcan, but how do they know that word? Has Tuvok ever used the Vulcan word infront of a Vidiian or is that just the writers messing up?

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In addition to mbq's answer, you should realize that the universal translator—which provides to the audience a way to understand alien languages—learns by context: the word Vulcan is heard because that's the only thing the Vidiian word for Tuvok's race could mean.

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    Why would they even have a word for it, though?
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jun 29, 2014 at 21:10
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    @LightnessRacesinOrbit It may not have originally been a word. They could have said "Species #7586" in Vidiianese and the translator understood from the context they meant 'Vulcan'.
    – Crow T Robot
    Commented Oct 12, 2014 at 0:28
  • @CrowTRobot I understand
    – user126198
    Commented Mar 24, 2020 at 17:57
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This was not their first contact with Voyager; they have scanned senior officers (including Tuvok) in Phage, so (assuming some subspace medical database sync) the knowledge about new species could propagate to all Vidiians (or at least their scanners).

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    BTW the more stupid thing is that they called the Vidiian pathogen "phage" -- phages by definition attack only Procaryota, so this implies Vidiians are huge bacteria.
    – user48
    Commented Feb 22, 2011 at 0:42
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    actually phage is usually used in the meaning of "bacteriophage", phage by itself has no specific meaning, other than its greek root (to eat).
    – SWeko
    Commented Feb 25, 2011 at 14:19
  • @SWeko This abbreviation is so commonly used that it is nearly as valid as the whole word.
    – user48
    Commented Feb 25, 2011 at 19:09
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    @mbq: I would downvote the comment if a could. Words evolve and names of things arise by analogy and in other illogical ways. If you asked someone from the 70s what a cell is, how many guesses would they have to make before they guessed it's colloquial for mobile telephone?
    – ThePopMachine
    Commented May 5, 2016 at 15:31

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