Galactic Astrography for Traveller
- Thread starter robject
- Start date
Sector and subsector names and such are probably all or mostly English - but there are a lot of junk names in it - and by 'English' I mean directly pronounceable using English rules without having to reference some 'translation' rules, i.e. they can be made up words but have the characteristics of English.
Another way of saying such would be that reference map names should be 'Englishized' or, more properly, 'Anglicized' (or 'Anglicised' as the British might write it!).
If a system is named after a local delicacy, I'd rather see it named 'Meatball' on a map - you can tell me its local name is 'Zzrughrathiiti'et-mali' in the colorful writeup.
YMMV.
Another way of saying such would be that reference map names should be 'Englishized' or, more properly, 'Anglicized' (or 'Anglicised' as the British might write it!).
If a system is named after a local delicacy, I'd rather see it named 'Meatball' on a map - you can tell me its local name is 'Zzrughrathiiti'et-mali' in the colorful writeup.
YMMV.
Exactly ... 'Meatball' is a lousy sounding sci-fi name - but for practical play it still beats the crap out of 'Zzrughrathiiti'et-mali' - and that toungue-twisting abuse is far better than a lot of the random names I've seen. 
EDIT: Our current spam bots might be stealing names from Traveller maps: Puma Fluxion; itizulugix; Moncler; Yayoi (actually those sound better than a lot of them...)
EDIT: Our current spam bots might be stealing names from Traveller maps: Puma Fluxion; itizulugix; Moncler; Yayoi (actually those sound better than a lot of them...)
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Exactly ... 'Meatball' is a lousy sounding sci-fi name - but for practical play it still beats the crap out of 'Zzrughrathiiti'et-mali' - and that toungue-twisting abuse is far better than a lot of the random names I've seen.
EDIT: Our current spam bots might be stealing names from Traveller maps: Puma Fluxion; itizulugix; Moncler; Yayoi (actually those sound better than a lot of them...)
Yayoi/Yaoi is Japanese gay ⌧ manga...
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Exactly ... 'Meatball' is a lousy sounding sci-fi name - but for practical play it still beats the crap out of 'Zzrughrathiiti'et-mali' - and that toungue-twisting abuse is far better than a lot of the random names I've seen.
So is that directed at me? I've tried to not get into too many names that are impossible to pronounce.
Huh? Not at all - not directed at anyone.
Just a pet peeve. I hadn't really looked at any published sector names till around 2000 and then it didn't become a peeve till I actually tried to use the maps and the gibberish names.
Just drawing attention to a fact that is probably overlooked or accepted more out of 'way it was done before' than any thoughtful choice. 'Exotic' doesn't have to be hard to use - but automatic systems commonly used tend to result in such. If I was going to use basically unpronounceable names for 'color', I'd go the full route and use a non-English font, myself. (Have done for props and such.)
Ah, ok. I use a random generator for some names (space corsair) but from those I pick something pronounceable. Sort of like where I live often has Indian names like Tippecanoe County, not english but pronounceable.
Ever been here?Exactly, except I think you are missing that Tippecanoe is obviously not the local Indian name, but surely an Anglicized version concatenating 'Tippe' with the Anglicized canoe from the Spaniard canoa which was adopted from the Haiti (Arawakan) canaoua. (I googled that, but knew canoe had to be of French origin and dating back to Columbus...)
Notice how canoe was changed to the character of English words (actually English adopted French character - c'est la vie!), by changing oa to oe - the Spanish oa having, in turn, replaced the Arawakan 'aoua'.
The local Indian's would speak an Algonquian language if I'm not mistaken (yep, quick google = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tippecanoe_River -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami-Illinois_language).
So, not only is Tippecanoe not a local Indian name due to the 'canoe' - Tippe is, I would bet, just a phonetic spelling of some actual Indian word. In the orthography of the local Indian language the word is surely spelled differently and likely not pronounceable in English.
In other words - Tippecanoe is pronounceable in English because it is an Englishized word - not an Indian word that just happens to have an English pronunciation.
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Exactly, except I think you are missing that Tippecanoe is obviously not the local Indian name, but surely an Anglicized version concatenating 'Tippe' with the Anglicized canoe from the Spaniard canoa which was adopted from the Haiti (Arawakan) canaoua. (I googled that, but knew canoe had to be of French origin and dating back to Columbus...)
Notice how canoe was changed to the character of English words (actually English adopted French character - c'est la vie!), by changing oa to oe - the Spanish oa having, in turn, replaced the Arawakan 'aoua'.
The local Indian's would speak an Algonquian language if I'm not mistaken (yep, quick google = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tippecanoe_River -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami-Illinois_language).
So, not only is Tippecanoe not a local Indian name due to the 'canoe' - Tippe is, I would bet, just a phonetic spelling of some actual Indian word. In the orthography of the local Indian language the word is surely spelled differently and likely not pronounceable in English.
In other words - Tippecanoe is pronounceable in English because it is an Englishized word - not an Indian word that just happens to have an English pronunciation.
It's the word for buffalo fish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ictiobus
And the natives spoke French and Wea, the town was called Ouiatenon.
I do similar stuff with world names, once again why it takes as long as it does to make a sector.
Yeah - I was targeting the 'auto-generators' esp. in regards to mapping large sections of a galaxy with sectors and such.
Ictiobus = Tippe? At least with Tippe I can delude myself into believing I'm pronouncing something 'intelligible' - I'd have serious doubts about my 'Ick Tea O Bus'...
Ouiatenon
= French pronounceable version of waayaahtanonki and way shorter(or should I write waay)! And, c'est la vie being a not insignificant portion of my French (that I had to Google to get the spelling of 
) I've no idea how to pronounce Ouiatenon...Where I come from the French influence was minimal at best, so Ouiatenon, given a chance, would have been changed to something more locally pronounceable.
Yeah - I was targeting the 'auto-generators' esp. in regards to mapping large sections of a galaxy with sectors and such.
Ictiobus = Tippe? At least with Tippe I can delude myself into believing I'm pronouncing something 'intelligible' - I'd have serious doubts about my 'Ick Tea O Bus'...
Ouiatenon
Where I come from the French influence was minimal at best, so Ouiatenon, given a chance, would have been changed to something more locally pronounceable.
The fish is the whole tippecanoe word such as etippekwana; ouiatenon, is just French for Wea-town, though the city now is French as well, Lafayette. But all language is butchered, Hoosier regiments in the Civil War often spoke german as their command language. So every name, english or not, could have a funny pronunciation.
So yes, the auto generators have to be taken with a grain of salt, and I do anglicize them often enough, and use odd names here and there. I use the way all the names here did develop as an example, but I'll bet there was a guy named Marc two hours due west of me in Illinois who did something similar.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
You know this how.....?
A buddy of mine manages a Comic Shop. I looked up the term following his use of it.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
Got ya.
