Poll of the Day > if we were to discover an intergalactic civilization

(+) Yeah! (+)

and somehow become friends with them

lets say they call our planet like planet scrimbiblior, and have records that date that as its name before there was even people on our planet

do we still call it earth or do we switch to scrimbiblior?

Respect planetary pronouns

This may be an inappropriate analogy, but English-speaking folk do not typically refer to that Japanese archipelago country by its Japanese name. Similarly, the Japanese do not normally refer to their country by the name English-speaking folk have assigned to it.

japan is just what nihon translates to

ConfusedTorchic posted...

japan is just what nihon translates to

and scrimbiblior will be what earth translates to for the aliens

EclairReturns posted...

This may be an inappropriate analogy, but English-speaking folk do not typically refer to that Japanese archipelago country by its Japanese name. Similarly, the Japanese do not normally refer to their country by the name English-speaking folk have assigned to it.

Germany's an even more pronounced example. You've got Germany in English, Deutschland in German, Allemagne in French, Tyskland in Scandavian languages, Niemcy in Polish... That largely boils down to the history of what various cultures called the region as their respective languages developed, and you can trace the etymology of some of them (like Italian is Germania, which is obviously related to what English settled on), but the bottom line is that there are a whole bunch of seemingly-unrelated names for the country depending on who you ask.

I do think it's a reasonably apt analogy, though. The aliens should expect that we would continue to call it Earth, but so should we expect that they continue to call it Scrimbiblior. Neither their name nor ours is necessarily incorrect, we just each keep using what's familiar (putting aside for a second the fact that it's not "Earth" in every Earth language, so it's not like we have consensus even now).

ConfusedTorchic posted...

japan is just what nihon translates to

Zipangu

EclairReturns posted...

This may be an inappropriate analogy, but English-speaking folk do not typically refer to that Japanese archipelago country by its Japanese name. Similarly, the Japanese do not normally refer to their country by the name English-speaking folk have assigned to it.

Was going to point this out. Humans don't even care what other humans call themselves, or the planet as a whole. We sure as fuck aren't going to care what aliens call us.



adjl posted...

Germany's an even more pronounced example. You've got Germany in English, Deutschland in German, Allemagne in French, Tyskland in Scandavian languages, Niemcy in Polish...

The best part with Germany is that almost every name for the country comes from one of the old tribes, but each one is referring to a different tribe. It's almost like the equivalent of different foreign nations referring to the US as Virginians, Georgians, New Yorkers, and Floridians.

In a similar way, you've got "Celtic" - which isn't how any Celtic tribe would likely have referred to themselves - that was a term the Greeks called them and the Romans adopted later. We just call them that because much of modern Western culture comes from Roman sources and roots.

(And that's not even getting into "Indians" in North America...)

Humans have never really respected what other people call themselves. We just go with whatever the dominant paradigm of a given era calls people.

agesboy posted...

and scrimbiblior will be what earth translates to for the aliens

that is already translated to English

in alien it's like fuckin

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/67cb850e.jpg

fuck you too website

you can transcribe something into the english alphabet without translating it

see: writing out nihon instead of

this is advanced alien galactic characters it's difficult

if we can't write or pronounce an approximation of it properly, why would we even be considering switching to that name to begin with

because that's it's name

Still Earth. Scrimbiblior is just their name for it.

If you had a tiny clone of Hitler in your pocket, would you torture him?

"You call your planet Dirt?"

"Earth!"

"That's the same thing, isn't it?"

ConfusedTorchic posted...

because that's it's name

No it's not. It's just the name they call it. Just like Earth is the name that English-speaking people call it. And Terra is what the Romans called it. Or Gaia. Or Di. Or Chikyu. Or Erde. Or Jord. Or even "Sol-3". And so on:

https://kidadl.com/baby-names/inspiration/names-for-earth-from-around-the-world

Unless the planet itself literally wakes up and tells you directly what it's name is, every name is simply someone else's interpretation. There is no "one true name".

The only reason we even think of "Earth" as being the "true" name is because a) we speak English, and b) because Europeans conquered large swaths of the world a few hundred years ago, and the British and Americans played a disproportionate role in forming global culture as a result (which is also why we don't call it Terra to match the rest of the planet naming scheme).

Doesn't matter what people called it first (if we cared about that, we'd already be calling it something that sounds like someone clearing their throat).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's almost like the equivalent of different foreign nations referring to the US as Virginians, Georgians, New Yorkers, and Floridians.

There is the consistent, erroneous, calling of all Americans "Yankees".

Nichtcrawler-X posted...

There is the consistent, erroneous, calling of all Americans "Yankees".

a term that japan usually uses to describe a type of delinquent because loanwords are fuckin weird!

agesboy posted...

a term that japan usually uses to describe a type of delinquent because loanwords are fuckin weird!

Barbarian and Hooligan come to mind in that case.

Nichtcrawler-X posted...

There is the consistent, erroneous, calling of all Americans "Yankees".

Or Arabs calling all Europeans "Franj" for years. To the point where in some languages, it still means "European" or "foreigner" in some languages (farang, ferenj, firangi).

And it's where the Ferengi got their name from in Star Trek.

I wouldn't mind them calling our home planet a different name so as long as the aliens are alright with us calling their home planet 'Earth Two'

ConfusedTorchic posted...

japan is just what nihon translates to

Why would it need to translate?

Count_Drachma posted...

Why would it need to translate?

It's not even technically accurate. It's not a translation but a mispronunciation.

Japan is the Anglicization of the Portuguese attempt at pronouncing Nihon.

"Land of the Rising Sun" would be a translation of Nihon (or Japan).

If anything, Japan is like what you get when you translate "Earth" into Japanese for your FF character (and wind up with Earisu), and then translate that back into English as Aeris. And then changing it to Aerith a decade later and pretending like it was always supposed to be Aerith in spite of that technically being even more wrong in every possible way (still not bitter).

And that's before we even bring "Wa" or "Yamato" into the discussion.

and nippon/nihon were what china called japan, too.

before that, japan was just called wa, also taken from chinese

I still don't know what side I stand on the Aerith/Aeris argument. Probably Aerith? They just kind of blend together in my brain because they're the same thing

ConfusedTorchic posted...

before that, japan was just called wa, also taken from chinese

I wish I could remember which game referred to japan as wakoku because I've played at least one that did

wakoku seiha den

that's the only one i know, and it's probably not that one since it's just a trivia game about japan in entirely japanese and i don't know if it was ever translated

google says it could have been waku waku 7, some fighting game series

i'm like 80% sure it's some shitty isekai manga that noone's ever heard of because i read an inordinate amount of that shit. either that or it was a background country in an rpg that never got fleshed out