Poll of the Day > The residents of Planet Earth

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What do you call the residents of planet Earth?

For example, residents of the USA are called Americans (in the English language, at least). People from France are called French (also in the English language).

In terms of astronomical bodies, hypothetical residents of Mars are called Martians, in Venus they are called Venusians. But what about the residents of Earth?

Earthlings?

Humans? Most aliens in sci fi usually call them Humans

Earthlings, right? Although Terran is also a good word.

FrozenBananas posted...

Earthlings?

Humans? Most aliens in sci fi usually call them Humans

I use Earthlings myself.

I think there's a problem with using "humans" though, because not all the residents of Earth are humans. Humans share the planet with millions of other species of lifeforms.

Nichtcrawler-X posted...

Earthlings, right? Although Terran is also a good word.

I heard Terran before, too!

Sol, we are the Sol system. So we are Sol's?

Klingons are still called Klingons even though their ancestral homeworld of Kling is gone

Lokarin posted...

Klingons are still called Klingons even though their ancestral homeworld of Kling is gone

That may just be their decision to kling on to the name, though.

SinisterSlay posted...

Sol, we are the Sol system. So we are Sol's?

Solites? Those are an antagonistic faction from one of our RPG campaigns, kinda like the Terraists from LoGH.

Solcialites

Nichtcrawler-X posted...

Solites? Those are an antagonistic faction from one of our RPG campaigns, kinda like the Terraists from LoGH.

Solons maybe?

People of Earth

Earthers

PikachuMaxwell posted...

I heard Terran before, too!

Trek tends to have non-Federation aliens call humans "Terrans". One notable example are the Ferengi, who always refer to them as "hyoo-mahns".

SinisterSlay posted...

Sol, we are the Sol system. So we are Sol's?

Solians, from the planet Sol 3

Let's be honest. If we ever meet aliens, we're going to come up with slang terms for them almost immediately, and they're going to do the same to us. So no one's going to worry about the official technical classifications for species when the Lizardmen of Algol-5 show up and all start calling us "Big Uglies". Even if it sounds all fancy in their language so none of us realize what they're actually calling us.



PikachuMaxwell posted...

In terms of astronomical bodies, hypothetical residents of Mars are called Martians, in Venus they are called Venusians. But what about the residents of Earth?

Depends on if you mean in general, scientifically, or in theoretical sci-fi.

The general go-to is just "humans". Earthlings if you want to go with the sci-fi assumption. Terrans if you're feeling fancy.

Realistically, if we ever managed to settle other planets or space colonies (which we almost certainly won't), you might get slang for people from "back home" as Homeworlders or Earthers or something like that, but as-is there's no real reason for the classification outside of sci-fi. And any terms sci-fi comes up with is going to be both non-official and non-standard.



PikachuMaxwell posted...

I think there's a problem with using "humans" though, because not all the residents of Earth are humans. Humans share the planet with millions of other species of lifeforms.

Yes, but no one gives a fuck about any of them.



SinisterSlay posted...

Sol, we are the Sol system. So we are Sol's?

Solarians is the usual go-to for any sci-fi story that uses Sol as our star's name, and then extrapolates a race name from it.

The real problem is that, if you do that, you're working from a flawed assumption. Sure, we might call a race from the Vega system Vegans or Vegarans or something. But that's because we're basing our name for them on our name for their star.

If there are aliens out there who would name us after our star (as opposed to our planet, or some other defining trait), they'd be naming us that after their name for our star. Which almost certainly isn't "Sol".

Meanwhile, it doesn't make much sense for us to call ourselves after our sun, because a) most of us don't call it "Sol" either, and b) because it feels much more natural to call ourselves after our planet.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Solarians is the usual go-to for any sci-fi story that uses Sol as our star's name, and then extrapolates a race name from it.

The real problem is that, if you do that, you're working from a flawed assumption. Sure, we might call a race from the Vega system Vegans or Vegarans or something. But that's because we're basing our name for them on our name for their star.

If there are aliens out there who would name us after our star (as opposed to our planet, or some other defining trait), they'd be naming us that after their name for our star. Which almost certainly isn't "Sol".

Meanwhile, it doesn't make much sense for us to call ourselves after our sun, because a) most of us don't call it "Sol" either, and b) because it feels much more natural to call ourselves after our planet.

But maybe future time we live on more planets in our Sol system. So we'd name ourselves after our system.
Also based on our trajectory Earth will be destroyed

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Sure, we might call a race from the Vega system Vegans or Vegarans or something.

Ah, yes, those evil Vegans were quite the menace.

Surrender or be Destroyed!!!!

Tau'ri

Nichtcrawler-X posted...

Ah, yes, those evil Vegans were quite the menace.

They're insidious!







...though jokes aside, because Vega's one of the brightest stars in the sky, it tends to crop up in sci-fi a lot. And because it's a simple derivation, multiple stories use Vegan (pronounced Vey-gan rather than Vee-gan) to describe the inhabitants of that system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Immortal

The term for a hardcore vegetarian was invented a little less than a century ago, but it didn't really start becoming all that popular in its own right until around 40 or so years ago. For most of the 50s, 60s, and 70s sci-fi writers probably wouldn't even have thought about the possible alternative definition (in the same way older stories take a while to start phasing out "gay" as a term for happiness after it became more and more exclusively associated with homosexuality).