I remember a lot of pre Internet Nerd discussions whether the name Executor meant “Someone who kills people” or “Someone who gets things done” (Like the Executor of an Estate). It’s the latter by definition but many nerds insisted it was the former.
Executor vs Executioner, eh?
I’m sure it was absolutely intended to be the former, which just sounds more menacing. But it’s really the wrong word for that meaning.
“Oh, no! It’s the Executor! They’re going to probate the shit out of our last will and testament!”
Executor sounds like it should be in The Phantom Menace with its sister ships, the Arbitrator, the Mitigator and the Schedule of Bound Tariff Concessions.
They then should have named the second Death Star the Collateral Estoppel.
Realistically, languages don’t work this way. People adopt retronyms.
If space became the primary location for military forces, the class of ships would simply be called destroyers. And the future military would adopt a new term, like ocean destroyers, for any ships that still operated in water on planets.
Modern examples of retronyms are terms like acoustic guitar, cloth diaper, independent bookstore, landline phone, and raw milk.
“Electric guitar,” “disposable diaper,” “chain bookstore,” “cell phone,”: and “pasteurized milk,” are all common terms, though.
These terms exist but I don’t feel they’re common terms. They’re generally only used when you’re specifically referred to the different types of objects. If somebody asks you, for example, to buy a quart of milk on your way home from work, you don’t ask if they want pasteurized milk or raw milk. The default meaning of the term milk is that the speaker is referring to pasteurized milk.
Yeah, I see your point. I’d quibble with a couple of your examples, like electric v. acoustic guitar, where I don’t think either term is the default, but over all, you’re right. Particularly in the context of the Star Wars universe, where space navies have been the default over wet navies for literally centuries, the guy designing a new class of space cruiser wouldn’t think it necessary to clarify that he’s not talking about a water-bound destroyer when he named it.
On the other hand, there are different classes of vehicles, military and otherwise, Typically you have vehicles which fly just off the ground using repulsorlifts, like landspeeders and speederbikes/swoops. Or they walk like AT-ATs. Or they have treads like Jawa sand crawlers. (Rarely do they have wheels, it’s like they just skipped them in technological development.)
Then you have flying atmospheric vehicles. T-16 Skyhoppers, Cloud Cars, Snow Speeders. They are not space craft but aren’t land-bound either.
Finally you have space craft, like a YT freighter, Star Destroyer, X-Wing, etc.
It is useful and necessary to distinguish between them. Military vehicles come in all types. You may not have a water fleet (we just haven’t seen them in screen at least) but there are certainly fleets of land vehicles and atmospheric vehicles. I would not be surprised if, for example, CorSec (Corellian Security Force) had a destroyer that operated on their planet that couldn’t leave atmosphere. You could have Star Destroyers, Air Destroyers, and Land Destroyers. (Hypothetically speaking; I can’t recall any examples from either canon or EU/Legends, but it’s not like I remember every vehicle anyone has ever come up with.)
My headcanon was that “Star” was the class of the ship, just like “Constellation” was the class of the Enterprise.
Imperial engineers just like the “Star” name.
“What will we call this new carrier design?”
“STAR DESTROYER!”
“…glad to see the enthusiasm. What about this mobile space station with the giant planet-destroying laser weapon?”
“DEATH STAR!”
“Hmm, I see a theme.”
Years later…
“The Empire will rise again, and we will do so with the power of this base built into the core of the planet. What should we name this weapon?”
“STAR KILLER!”
“Herschel, you’re still alive?!”
Or maybe someone had put in a wildcard asterisk (*) for put something here and someone at the other end read it as Star Destroyer not knowing they were supposed to substitute it with something else.
//i\\
Possibly . . . but then we have all the names of everything in the franchise.
The term “Star Destroyer” was coined a long, long time ago. The question we should be asking is why navies 100+ years ago started calling their torpedo boats “destroyers” when that is what they should have called their battleships.
My recollection is that Destroyers started out as Torpedo Boat Destroyers, before the term got shortened to just Destroyers. To this day Destroyers are still smaller vessels, serving as fleet escorts for Cruisers and Aircraft Carriers (in addition to some independent operations as well).
So classifying a massive Battleship/Aircraft Carrier hybrid starship as a Destroyer (small escort vessel) makes zero sense to me. “Star Destroyer” is a cool (for certain values of “cool”), ominous sounding vessel class-name. I agree with others that Lucas just reached into a grab-bag of cool-sounding names to fit the Saturday Matinee Serial vibe he was going for to frame his Hero’s Journey saga.
They were once called “torpedo boat destroyers” because they were meant to destroy smaller torpedo boats (edit: as referenced in previous post), but, probably due to the process Little Nemo references, since there weren’t other types of ship called “destroyers”, it was eventually shortened to just “destroyers”.
Apparently my humor is too subtle.
Someone laughed in a galaxy far, far away.
This is based on the military doctrine of “how many different toys can we sell?”