Dunno. Looking at this list of Bajoran, Cardassian, Ferengi and Klingon names, i’d be hard pressed to sort them back into groups by race if the were mixed up except probably some of the Klingon ones that have apostrophes in them)
Seems like they just went for names composed of syllables that were alien/uncommon to English. Maybe that just coincidentally aligned with Turkish or other name sounds.
According to an internet answer (which doesn’t allow itself to be linked to from an external site, for some reason), the term “seems to have emerged in Arabic during the Crusades. It was specifically used to represent the Roman Catholic world originating from the word Frankish, meaning French”. It also mentions associated words in other languages: frangos in Greek and* al-Faranj* in Arabic.
TOS established a few conventions that TNG and later mostly gve up – Vulcan male names all starting with S, Klingon male names all with K; Vulcan female names starting with T’ did stick around longer.
Anyone else find it interesting that aside from humans, Star Trek race names are all capitalized? Cardassians, Bajorans, Klingons, Romulans. But in, say, the Mass Effect universe and Dungeons and Dragons, they’re all lower-case. There’s asari, turians, krogan, quarians, elves, dwarves, et cetera.
That’s because all the races in Star Trek have the same name as their home planet - Cardassians come from Cardassia, Vulcans come from Vulcan, Bajorans come from Bajor, etc. Klingons are the only exception I can think of. Well, and humans, of course.
The aliens in Mass Effect don’t follow that naming convention - turians are from Palaven, asari are from Thessia, and so on. Same with elves and dwarves in most better quality D&D settings - their homelands are usually something with a bunch of extra "y"s and extraneous apostrophes, not “Elfland” and “Dwarfland.”
The original series – no. They weren’t very good with names, anyway: Uhura was based on the Swahili word for freedom, and was chosen primarily because there was a best seller “Urhuru” that came out a year or two. The guy from Scotland was called “Scott,” the guy from Ireland was “Riley” (close to “O’Reilly,” the vaudeville name for any generic Irishman), the guy from Russia was named after one of Russia’s greatest writers. There couldn’t have been a lot of thought put into it and there are many examples of lazy names throughout the show – Khan, Elaan of Troius (for God’s sake).
The “Romulans” clearly came from “Romulus,” the founder of Rome. I’ve also heard stories that the name was chosen because they meant Klingons, but forgot what they had called the Klingons (or vice versa).
I’ve noticed the Ferengi in Deep Space Nine all have names that sound like common English words. Quark, Rom, Nog, Brunt. Well except for the Grand Nagus, Zek.
Babylon 5 also used “Earthers” for humans. Well, at least some nonhuman characters did-- I can’t remember if it was a general convention. And some works use “Terrans” (which means the same thing) in the same way.
Also, when Spock was a child on Vulcan, the Vulcan children called him “Earther.” Not in the actual series, but in TAS episode “Yesteryear” and in the first Abrams movie, I believe.
Scott and Riley are common surnames in Scotland and Ireland, respectively. They actually ordered some Scott tartan (from Scotland) for Scotty’s dress uniform.
They misspelled Chekov’s surname. The author’s is Chekhov. In more than 40 years of dealing with the Russian language, I have yet to encounter any native speaker who spells it with a k instead of a kh.
Romulus and Remus formed the double planet system first mentioned in “Balance of Terror,” early in the first season. We didn’t get to see any Remans until one of the TNG movies. IIRC, they evolved somewhat differently from the Romulans, who were an offshoot of the Vulcan race. In one of James Blish’s books, it was mentioned that no one in the Federation was sure what their own name for themselves was.
I believe the Klingons were created by Gene Coon, late in the first season. They first appeared in “Errand of Mercy.” IIRC, it was noted in Star Trek Creator that the name came from Robert Klingon, an officer who served with Gene Roddenberry in the LAPD.
In “Charlie X,” McCoy refers to own race as “Earthlings,” rather than “Earthers” or “Terrans.”
It was also indicated in The Making of Star Trek that the names Romulus and Remus were bestowed on them because their culture bore similarities to that of Ancient Rome. (How this was determined in an era when no human or ally had ever seen a Romulan either up close or ship-to-ship was not explained.)
According to David Gerrold, the makeup used for the Klingons was inconsistent the second time they appeared (in “The Trouble with Tribbles”). Ruth Berman explained this in one of her short stories by saying they obviously belonged to different races of the same species, which is entirely logical.
The cranial ridges used in and after TNG could likewise have easily been explained by the Empire being made up of many different species, all of whom are considered Klingons.
