Re: Naming conventions

Jim Henry wrote:
> On 4/12/07, Dave Rutan <rutan3@...> wrote:
>
>> Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on how to name things
>> such as an alien race which is already named in other languages.  If it
>> comes down to naming them as 'Members of System GIV3.3,' how is that
>> handled?
>
> I'm not sure I understand what you mean.  Do you
> mean their name for themselves, or other people's
> name for them?  If their name for themselves, then
> it seems unlikely they would call themselves
> 'Members of System GIV3.3'.  More likely "people"
> as veritosproject suggests, or "talking creatures,"
> or "thinking beings," or something; or (more
> likely still) a name that used to mean one of those
> things in the proto-language but through sound
> and meaning change now just means "this species
> we belong to".
>
> Other people's name for them?  You could make
> up a name in another conlang, human or alien,
> or in a natlang (perhaps a future-evolved version
> of English or Mandarin or what have you) describing
> them by an epithet for an interesting obvious
> characteristic they have, or naming them for
> the humans' name for the star system or region
> of the galaxy they come from, or where humans
> first met them...
Let's imagine a conland/auxlang which was created to allow humans and
various bizzare alien species to communicate. Some of these aliens
cannot speak, but can gesture, or burp bubbles, or emit radio pulses,
etc.  So this conlang is based on 10 syllables. Spoken syllables for
speakers, arm/hand gestures for non speakers, musical notes for
bird-like singers, etc.

Since there are only 10 syllables, there's no way the given names for
known planets or their inhabitants can be 'imported' into the language,
so should the users of said language simply designate a name for each
specie and their planet, or has someone at some time come up with a
suggested method for giving proper names in a Solresol-like language?

Maybe I explained it better that time?

Dave Rutan

--
The Koplushian Alliance
http://koplushia.wiki-site.com/

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