How Planets Will Be Named

[David Johnston2]

In the hypothetical starfaring future depends on who is doing the naming.

Scientists: Increasingly obscure mythological entities. Ceridwen. Bonadea. Summanus. Sethlans. Wendigo.

Politicians of the Colonizing Power: Dead historical figures and places that already exist. Shakespeare. Terranova, Houston. Armstrong. New Virginia, Colbert.

Revolutionaries Against The Colonizing Power: Themselves or what they offer their followers. Libertad. Collins. Harmony. People's Republic. Lothar. New Hope.

Marketing Guys: Things that sound like promising places to live. Adventure. Greenfield. Joyous. Prosperity. Paradise. Promise

Bitter Victims of Marketing Guys: Futility. Endzone. False Promise. Hell.

Guys Who Have Been Out In Space Too Long: Dithyramb. Dontgohere. Ghosthaunt. Scorchmark. Worthless Lump #226

[johndallman]

The only time I've gamed this (a game of the start of interstellar exploration) we ended up naming the planets of Alpha Centauri B after dead astronauts and others who'd died trying to leave Earth's atmosphere.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Revolutionaries Against The Colonizing Power: Themselves or what they offer their followers. Libertad. Collins. Harmony. People's Republic. Lothar. New Hope.

Don't forget historical revolutionaries - Spartacus, Wat Tyler, Nils Dacke, George Washington...

[robkelk]

For nearby stars, some planets will be named after the corresponding planets in fiction. (For example, Vernor Vinge's novel Marooned in Realtime calls Lalande 21185 "Gatewood's Star", so a planet orbiting it could be called "Gatewood.") Wikipedia has lists of stars in fiction, which provide a starting point for this approach.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Beam Piper had the worlds of the closest stars named from different pantheons.


Hans

[Phantasm]

In my one space opera game, I ran the gamut.

The main worlds of Epsilon Eridani were a heavily industrialized world originally colonized by General Motors as a company planet named New Detroit, and a pirate haven named Blackbeard. The two marginally habitable planets in Alpha Centauri B were Tatooine and Hoth, based on their primary climates and officially named by sci-fi geeks (one reason the setting will never see print: I stole from everyone). The human name for the one sapient reptilian species' homeworld was Quetzalcoatl (the local name translated roughly as "home"). Many planets out beyond the 20 ly radius around Earth ended up with a $StarName-$Number designation or $FounderName's Planet.

One of the worlds was named Camelot, with a permanent non-stop Renaissance Faire atmosphere in tourist areas and a psionics-and-force-swords knightly order that was a combination Knights of the Round Table and Jedi.

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but the Geek Shall Inherit The Stars. :)

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but the Geek Shall Inherit The Stars. :)

Sounds like either you were cribbing from Gernsback-2, or we were cribbing from you... Amazing how often people come up with similar ideas, isn't it?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Sounds like either you were cribbing from Gernsback-2, or we were cribbing from you... Amazing how often people come up with similar ideas, isn't it?

Hey, can Handwavium unleash/create psionic powers, or a reasonable (or not) facsimile thereof?

[malloyd]

Most places in reality seem to end up named for people. Even many of the ones that don't appear to be will if you dig back far enough be named Somebody's hill/ford/road/meadow. You might not think that from the kind of names things get in fiction, and maybe if you have a small number of planets to name you can sustain some other sort of convention, but if you have a lot of them expect to revert to that. Take a look at a list of Minor Planet names - notice how many of them are just surnames, or two names run together.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Hey, can Handwavium unleash/create psionic powers, or a reasonable (or not) facsimile thereof?

Maybe - it depends on which powers. (And "reasonable facsimile" is far more likely.) But rather than derail this thread, let's talk about this in the dedicated forum.