Name Origins

[jwb]

I'm trying to compile a list of well known TOS and TNG Trek names that were inspired by real or mythical people. Are there any glaring examples I'm missing? I have:

Vulcans: named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
Romulans: named after Romulus, the mythical founder and first king of Rome.
Klingons: purportedly named after Wilbur Clingan, a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Police Department who served with Gene Roddenberry.
Jean-Luc Picard: named after Jean Piccard, a pioneer in scientific ballooning.
Geordi La Forge: named after George La Forge, a quadriplegic Star Trek fan who died in 1975.
Q: named for Janet Quarton, the president of Star Trek Action Group and co-chair of the IDIC fan club.
Bolians: named after Cliff Bole, who directed 42 episodes of Star Trek.
Guinan: named after Mary "Texas" Guinan an actress, producer, and entrepreneur from the 1920s who was arrested several times for serving alcohol and providing adult entertainment.
Borg: a shortening of “cyborg,” a term derived from “cybernetic organism” that was created in the 1960s.
Cardassians: a modification of “Circassians,” an ethnic group native to Circassia.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Are we going to include ships and shuttle names.

I was really pleased when the USS Crazy Horse was first mentioned.

 

[Orac]

Sargon: named after the ruler of the Akkadian Empire from the 24th to 23rd Centuries BC.

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

I think you might get more responses in the General Trek Discussion.

Energizing now.

 

[auntiehill]

Interesting....but probably better suited for the General Trek forum.

 

[jwb]

Thanks for the help! I think ship names and shuttles aren't quite what I'm looking for (though a list of their names is interesting in its own right); but I agree that it's nice to have the Crazy Horse. I also liked the El Baz, Hawking, and Justman shuttles

 

[Forbin]

Nausicans: Named after the Japanese Manga and anime "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind."
USS Akira: Named for the Japanese manga and anime "Akira."
Worf: Named by Gene Rodenberry's dog. ( )

 

[Christopher]

Vulcans: named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

Probably also influenced by Vulcan, the hypothetical planet inside Mercury's orbit that Urbain Le Verrier proposed in the 1840s as the explanation for Mercury's orbital anomalies. The planet was never found, and those anomalies were explained by General Relativity in 1915, but the idea of a planet Vulcan in the Solar System persisted in science fiction for decades. (Note that Doctor Who did a serial set on a planet called Vulcan in November 1966, shortly after TOS first used the name, even though the two shows' producers were surely unaware of each other's efforts.) Considering that Roddenberry's initial pitch document for Star Trek referred to Spock as "probably half Martian," we know he was initially thinking in terms of Solar planets for Spock's origin, so it's conceivable that when Spock was first called a "Vulcanian," the intention was that he was from the cis-Mercurian planet Vulcan. It wasn't until "Amok Time" that Vulcan was explicitly established as being in its own separate star system.

Romulans: named after Romulus, the mythical founder and first king of Rome.

And his twin brother Remus. The implicit intention of "Balance of Terror" was that humans gave the twin planets of their enemy the names Romulus and Remus because of the twin connection, although ENT: "Minefield" unfortunately scuttled that idea.

Jean-Luc Picard: named after Jean Piccard, a pioneer in scientific ballooning.

And possibly director Jean-Luc Godard as well. The character was originally going to be named Julien Picard.

Also, William T. Riker was based on Willard Decker from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and his name was influenced by William T. Rice, the lead character of Gene Roddenberry's first TV series as a creator/producer, The Lieutenant. Deanna Troi was based on TMP's Ilia, whose name resembles Ilion or Ilium, the Greek name for the city of... wait for it... Troy.

Wesley Crusher was named for Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, who saw the character as based on his younger self. At one point, Wesley was going to be a girl named Leslie.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Don't forget about Khan Noonien Singh and Noonien Soong, supposedly named after a war buddy of Gene Roddenberry's that has yet to be proven to exist.

I wonder if Spock was named after the baby doctor. Certainly, Gene should've recognized the name, given that he raised children in the early '60s, when Dr. Spock's popularity was sky high.

 

[jwb]

Oo, good ones!

 

[JonnyQuest037]

When I was doing some research for a TOS Mirror Universe story I was working on a while back, I discovered that the Marlena Moreau's last name Moreau is derived from Old French, meaning "little dark." (literally “son of the Moor.”) A rather appropriate name for someone who lives in the Mirror Universe!

The TOS episode "Dagger of the Mind" features a character named Lethe who has forgotten her old life. She's named after a river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology. And of course there's Dr. Helen Noel, who met Kirk at the Enterprise's Christmas party.

Dr. McCoy's nickname "Bones" come from the old naval tradition of calling the ship's doctor "Sawbones." And it would not surprise me if Dr. Crusher's surname was derived from "Bonecrusher," although I've never heard that confirmed.

Harlan Ellison selected the surname of Edith Keeler due to a hint in his original script for "The City on the Edge of Forever" that Kirk and Spock must find the key to the time disruptions.

Kim Cattrall suggested the name "Eris" for her character in Star Trek VI, after the Greek goddess of strife and discord. Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn adjusted it to "Valeris" to make it sound more Vulcan like.

Oh, and of course, Elaan of Troyius was derived from Greek mythology's Helen of Troy, a woman so beautiful that she started the Trojan War between Troy and Sparta.

I'm sure that TOS has a lot more examples of characters named from literature and mythology that I'm forgetting.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Just thought of one more!

STVI's Chancellor Gorkon's name was derived from Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped bring an end to the Cold War between the U.S and the Soviet Union. And Nicholas Meyer told his makeup artists to make Gorkon look like a Klingon Abraham Lincoln.