Questions tagged [names]
For questions about names: of characters, including titles, nicknames, and honorifics; of in-universe locations, e.g. countries or planets; or of objects, e.g. vessels, weapons, etc. Questions can be in-universe or out-of-universe, about topics such as origins, meanings, usage and pronunciation. For questions about the title of a work of sci-fi or fantasy, use the [title-explanation] tag instead.
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Is there any evidence on whether "Balrog" from Street Fighter is named after the Balrogs in The Lord of the Rings?
In the original Japanese version of Street Fighter II, Balrog is a claw-wielding Spanish ninja/assassin. When the game was localized for the US, this character's name was changed to Vega.
In the US ...
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How is the name "Took" pronounced?
After hearing someone pronounce "Took" (as in "Fool Of A...") the same as the English word "took", I wondered to myself: Have I been pronouncing it wrong this whole time? ...
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How should I pronounce Jalabhar Xho’s last name?
In George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, there is a somewhat exotic character called Jalabhar Xho:
JALABHAR XHO, an exile prince from the Summer Isles
I’m not sure how to pronounce ...
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Did L. Ron Hubbard write about a planet called Trantor?
In an article about the '80s video game Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper, the author, Nick Bruty, says he got the name "Trantor" from "a planet in an L. Ron Hubbard book."
Trantor is ...
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X-Men: Why is Remy LeBeau nicknamed Gambit?
Why is Remy LeBeau's nickname Gambit?
In chess, gambit is an opening tactic in which the player sacrifices a pawn to get a better position. I am not familiar with Gambit being a good chess player (or ...
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Is it culturally insensitive to give a cat a Khajiit name?
This may sound random, but I was watching a video where a guy was playing Elder Kings 2. In the game, he got a pet cat and he was thinking about giving it a Khajiit name because Khajiit look like cats,...
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Where does the "Starname Prime" naming scheme for planets originate?
I mean the name of a star followed by the word Prime, used to denote the system's most important/primary inhabited world. For example, Earth would be called Sol Prime using this naming scheme. I've ...
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In the title of 'Mia and Me', who is 'me'?
The children fantasy franchise Mia and Me (2012) revolves around the eponymous girl Mia who can travel to the parallel world of Centopia by means of a magical bracelet and an (ever-changing) ...
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In Pursuit of the Pankera, who is J. Worthington Jones?
In Heinlein's posthumous The Pursuit of the Pankera the main characters are reading a history of the alternate universe they are in (an alternate universe with Lensmen and Boskone) and encounter an ...
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Which Abednedo are named after Beastie Boys titles?
Some Abednedo have been named after albums or songs by the Beastie Boys, most famously Ello Asty after Hello Nasty. The Abednedo themselves having been named after part of the refrain to "...
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Did C. S. Lewis indicate how he chose the name "Tash" for the Calormene's demon-god?
I recently learned that there is an archeological site near Aleppo along the Syrian-Turkish border, called "Arslan Tash." The name means "lion stone," apparently in reference to ...
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Why is "Droxine" a name appropriate for someone beautiful and pleasant?
In Star Trek, season 3, episode 21, "The Cloud Minders", Spock is considering his surroundings at the time, and one of its residents:
Here on Stratos, everything is incomparably beautiful ...
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Why are the worlds of Might & Magic referred to as "nacelles"?
Some worlds in the original Might&Magic universe are named "nacelle":
(VARN) Vehicular Astropod Research Nacelle
(CRON) Central Research Observation Nacelle
(XEEN) Xylonite Experimental ...
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Mortal Kombat: Why is Scorpion called that name?
One of the most iconic characters of the Mortal Kombat franchise is Scorpion, an undead ninja whose real name is Hanzo Hasashi. He first appeared in the original video game as the arch-enemy of Sub-...
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Was the Star Wars capital planet named "Coruscant" after this passage from Pebble in the Sky?
Rereading Pebble in the Sky (1950), Isaac Asimov's first complete novel, I noticed a particular word near the beginning chapter 6:
Ennius looked at the stars. They were the real beauty to him, since ...
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What is the most frequently mentioned proper noun/adjective in Star Trek that remains undepicted?
Part of world-building involves making references to invented objects, people, and races. And since Star Trek had been going on for seven decades, there's been a lot of it. Sometimes some of those ...
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Are there meaningful anagrams in Lord of the Rings character names?
Motivation
I just observed that "Denethor", the human steward who thought himself king has all the same letters as the word "dethrone" which is what he intended to do to Aragorn, ...
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Why are all the DS9 runabouts named after Earth rivers?
It seems whenever we hear mention of a runabout assigned to DS9 it's named after a river on Earth—the Rio Grande, the Ganges, the Yangtzee Kiang—is there a particular reason for this naming convention?...
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Why does Sabriel remark that "Touchstone" is a fool's name?
In Garth Nix's book Sabriel, the titular character discovers a statue of a man. She is able to reanimate the man, she asks his name, and he replies "Touchstone." She replies something along ...
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Why is Starfire named after an herb?
The DC Comics superhero Starfire is a Tamaranian princess who joins the Teen Titans after escaping her home planet of Tamaran. The most baffling part of her origin story is her real name: Koriand'r. ...
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Does the name Ten Forward have any precedent in the real world or in fiction?
Ten Forward is, of course the inconic lounge/bar/gathering area on the Enterprise-D. It is named after the fact that it is located at the forward extreme of the tenth deck, making it the most ...
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What are the Legions High Gothic Names?
In the WH40K universe, a lot of High Gothic is depicted as Latin. E.g. the different branches of government: Adeptus Administratum (administro, latin for minister), Adeptus Munitorum (munitio, latin ...
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What is the term for how Star Wars characters have names based on real people, but scrambled?
I distinctly remember there being a page on Wookieepedia on this.
For instance, taken from this Quora Answer
Bo-Katan is a portmanteau of Dave Filoni's wife's name (Anne) and her cat's name…
Also, ...
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The Ander family in Tepper’s A Plague of Angels: who are they?
There are four families in the Place of Power, and Sheri Tepper appears to have named them after various well-known institutions:
Ellel — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Mitty — Massachusetts ...
user147074
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First use of the term "belter" in sci-fi as the demonym for asteroid belt inhabitants?
Obviously the series The Expanse has brought the term "Belter" into relatively common use. However, I have seen the expression used in Larry Niven's great novel Protector (strongly ...
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What was Chewie's last name? Does he even have one?
I have never seen the new Solo movie, so this may be a dumb question, but really, what is Chewbacca's last name, if he has one? Han just calls him Chewie, Chewbacca, or thing's like that, and never (...
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Is the name of The Master known?
One of the great mysteries of the Whoniverse is "What is the true name of The Doctor?".
Are there any hints or clues through Nu Who or Classic Who (or even books or audio) as to the true ...
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What is the significance/meaning of Apoc's name?
One of the crew members of the hovership Nebuchadnezzar is named "Apoc". What is the meaning/significance of that name? Is it short for something, or perhaps an acronym? A recent answer ...
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Have the Wachowskis explained what significance they intended for the character name "Trinity"?
Many of the characters in The Matrix have meaningful names which relate to the role the character plays. For example:
"Neo" is an anagram of "One" (for The One). Also, one of the ...
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What is Mafalda’s surname?
There exists a character that was cut from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (the book). Her name was Mafalda and she was a cousin to the Weasleys on Mrs Weasley’s side (the Prewetts).
Due to being ...
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What is Prince Pondicherry’s wife called in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Grandpa Joe tells Charlie the story of Prince Pondicherry and the palace he got that was made of chocolate.
His Princess went unnamed and the 2005 film adaptation ...
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What is Snow's granddaughter's name in "The Hunger Games"?
Does anybody know what President Snow's granddaughter's name is?
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Why is Monkey a monkey?
The titular character in The New Legends of Monkey is named "Monkey", which is short for his apparently being the "monkey king".
The series is a fantasy/comedy adaptation of the ...
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Meaning of acronym UNBI
"Lochinvar" is a short story by Margaret St. Clair, published in 1961 in Galaxy (and available to read at the Internet Archive). The titular character is an alien creature from Mars, with ...
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Viridis and felodon: shared worldbuilding?
A recent question in the "Hal Clement challenge" asked if there was any meaning or significance to the name "felodon", an amphibian carnivore with large fangs that featured in ...
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What does PE&G stand for, and does it connect with Mazda's name?
I've just read Margaret St. Clair's short story "An Old Fashioned Bird Christmas", available on the Internet Archive. In the setting of this story, mention is made of an organisation (a ...
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Was the word 'Warcraft' ever used in-universe?
According to Wikipedia, the name 'Warcraft' was chosen for no particular reason other than that it sounded cool. The Wikipedia links to this article that discussed the origin of the name in more ...
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Has anyone ever acknowledged this interpretation of the name of the Galactica?
Before Edwin Hubble discovered the true distance to objects such as the Andromeda "Nebula", it was widely believed that all the stars in the universe were contained within the Milky Way, ...
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Is Ripley (from Alien) a reference to 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not'?
To someone over a certain age, "Ripley" reminds us of "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" which was a sort of cartoon strip about amazing "facts" (not too worried about ...
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Where did the name “Narnia” come from? What does this name mean?
What inspired C.S. Lewis to name his imaginary world “Narnia?”
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Any meaning or significance to the name "Felodon"?
I've just read Hal Clement's 1963 short novella "The Green World" (available from Project Gutenberg). Set on an alien planet, it features an amphibian carnivore which is called a Felodon and ...
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What's the significance of the bounty hunter being named Jubal Early?
The last TV episode of Firefly, "Objects in Space", features a bounty hunter named Jubal Early who boards the Serenity with the intent of kidnapping River and claiming the bounty on her head....
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Was the name "Thanos" derived from "Thanatos", the name of the Greek god of death?
This is intended to be an out-of-universe question
I recently learned of Thanatos the Greek god of death, and I could not help but notice how similar the name Thanos is to the name Thanatos. This got ...
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Does the name of Shub Niggurath contain or reference a racial slur?
I've always thought that the name of the Lovecraft deity Shub Niggurath was intended to sound vaguely Semitic, but I recently noticed that it seems to encode a certain well-known English-language ...
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Why was the ship named Albireo in Hal Clement's "Hot Planet"?
In Hal Clement's short story "Hot Planet" (freely available to read online), a group of scientists and engineers are engaged in a mission on the surface of Mercury. Their ship is called the ...
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What is the significance of the name Azazel for Asimov's demon?
Isaac Asimov wrote a series of short stories about a rather dislikeable man named George Bitternut who claims to have a sort of pet demon, around two centimetres high, whom he can summon to perform ...
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Why is Sauron's name similar to the Greek/Latin word for "lizard"?
The name Sauron is spelled like, and sounds very similar to the Greek word σαῦρος, or the corresponding Latin word saurus, which means lizard.
Is this just a coincidence, or is there a (known or ...
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Why are the killer robots called necromancers?
In Raised by Wolves the religious faction created killer robots that they called necromancers. Why?
A necromancer communicates with the dead. The title seems to have nothing to do with the robots.
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Does Ron ever introduce himself as "Ronald Weasley" in Harry Potter?
Per Wizarding World (formerly Pottermore), Ron's full name is Ronald Bilius Weasley and he uses his family name Ron Weasley. I recognize that even the first time he met Harry, he called himself "...
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Why does Kira pronounce Bajor differently?
I'm hardly a linguist, but it's impossible to not notice.
Throughout the show, Major Kira refers to Bajor and Bajoran with a hard J, while everyone else (it seems) uses a soft J. Is there any in-...
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