Science Fiction/Fantasy "bi-lingual" pairs

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by the recnt thread on words in different language that are spelled the same, but are unrelated and have different meanings. I notice that there are a lot of names and words in science fiction and fantasy that don’t mean what the words usually mean in English. This is often taken as ignorance on the part of the writer. But it’s more charitable to view these are translations or transliterations of some alien language that, by chance, resemble words in English. Statistically, this is likely to occur. And, as that other thread made clear, there are plenty of real-life examples.

Here are a few:

Noble gases are a useful source

Helium – The name of one of the largest kingdoms on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom (Mars). also the names of its two largest cities (Greater Helium and Lesser Helium). The domain of Rados Mors, and the place Dejah Thoris was princess of. Nevertheless, from the Engilsh meaning, I could help think the place was full of balloons and the people had high, squeaky voices.

Krypton – Superman’s home planet, of course. Also the source of radioactive Kryptonite (although at first “Kryptonite” was the stuff Superman constructed a special gun out of, not something that made him weak).

Xenon – The name of a circa 1980s pinball machine with alien and futuristic elements, but nothing to do with the inert gas.

Radon – transliteration of the name of one of the first kaiju. It’s evidently derived from pteRAnoDON, since it was basically a giant flying reptile. This is a rare case of the translators stepping in to fix things. They evidently realized that “radon” already meant something, so they switched the two vowels to make the name “Rodan”, which it’s been ever since.

Measuring Units

parsec – Han Solo famously boasted of making the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, therefore suggesting that “parsec” was a unit of time. Or Star Wars SpaceTime, or something. Fans have bbeen fanwanking this since 1977, because “parsec” is already a unit of distance, equal to about 3.25 light years, and a portmanteau of "PARallax of one SECond’, since it corresponds to the distance from earth’s orbit something is if the parallax you see over the course of six months is one second. But it’s better explained as simply an alien-English “bilingual” coincidence.

Micron – It was hilarious when the long-awaited original version of Battlestar Galactica aired on TV with its expensive Star Wars-inspired John Dykstra special effects finally aired, and we were breathlessly told that the Cylon ships were Five Microns Away. Around here, of course, “micron” is short from “micrometer”, or a millionth of a meter, just above the wavelength of light. Cylons that close would be hard to miss. Bilingual Coincidence is a much kinder explanation than ignorance

other

Id – I don’t refer to the famous use of this term in Forbidden Planet, but to A. E. Van Vogt’s use of the term in his first published SF story, “Black Destroyer” (and its subsequent use in his fix-up novel Voyage of the Space Beagle). It’s the stuff Coeurl the cat-like alien eats, and it’s evidently phosphorus, which he extracts from human bodies.

There are plenty of others. Any contributions?

2

“Valar” means something like “All men” or “humanity” in High Valyrian (in the Song of Ice and Fire). It refers to the highest rank of angelic beings in Quenya (in the Lord of the Rings).

Oops. I think I missed your point. I’ll come up with another example. Ah. A villainous character (a conquering dictator) in the early Pern works is named “Fax” - no word on how well he transmits duplicated information telephonically.

3

In Star Wars (both current canon and Legends), the style of music played by the cantina bands on Tatooine is called “jizz”.

4

Tolkien seemed to like saying that things in Middle Earth had di=fferent meanings in different made-up languages. Look at “Orthanc”

But, yeah, that’s not quite what I was looking for. I hadn’t heard of Fax of Pern before

5

Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series also includes the word “turn”, which her characters use to mean “year”.

In Sarah Maria Griffin’s book Spare and Found Parts, the word “Turn” refers to one or more apocalyptic events prior to the beginning of the story.

In The Giver by Lois Lowry, the term “release” refers to euthanasia.

6

These examples don’t appear to be radically different uses of words unrelated to their English equivalents, though. They seem to be extensions of the English words to related meanings.

7

In Jack Vance’s “Servants of the Wankh” the Wankh are an alien species. In later editions of the book, the species is called the Wannek

8

Does Ford Prefect from Hitchhiker’s Guide count? In the books, it’s the name of an alien, in real life it’s this:

I have to confess that I didn’t know about the car long after I first read the books, and didn’t know that “prefect” is an actual English noun, but always thought that “Prefect” was a pun on “Perfect”.

9

In the original Battlestar Galactica, “cubit” was a unit of money. They were small square or rectangular coins, and nowhere near a cubit in size.

In the early Flash Gordon comic strips, people communicated by “spaceograph”. This was basically a Zoom call, a combination of telephone and video, with the name derived from “telegraph”. But the “-ograph” construction always reminded me of the spirograph toy, with which you coud draw cool geometric patterns.

10

No, because that was the joke. Ford says he chose his name to be ‘nicely inconspicuous’ or some such, the joke being that he’d mistaken automobiles as being the dominant life form on earth.

11

I like the expletive that the crew of the Red Dwarf habitually use: smeg.
This is also the name of a popular brand of refrigerator, which probably is entirely unrelated to the word used by the Dwarf gang.

12

Thanks, I didn’t remember that explanation.

13

Which is a shortening of “smegma”, which is a real word. And it’s not something that you want associated with a refrigerator.

14

I’ve always thought it was because the Ford Prefect was about as nondescript as an automobile can get.

15

That’s a good one. Fax is the villain in the first Pern novel, Dragonflight, published in 1968. When I first read the Pern novels, it was the mid-to-late '80s, when fax machines had quickly become ubiquitous in offices, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the bad guy’s suddenly unfortunate name.

16

Similarly, DC Comics has a species originally known as Gil’Dishpan. It was later retconned to Gil’Dan and Gil’Dishpan was explained as a mistranslation that persisted from first contact. (I’m not sure, but I think that that retcon has been undone…their page on the DC Fandom wiki is Gil’Dishpan, in any case.)

17

The superhero Starfire’s real name is Koriand’r.

Her evil sister is K’omandr.

18

This one was minor but actually led to an apology. In a 1983 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction an author named Harvey Jacobs had a satirical story about a planet where the vegetation was so lush that the inhabitants’ droppings were fantastically useful in agriculture, leading to an ad campaign to encourage the inhabitants to do nothing but eat and produce. The planet and the story were named “Busby” - leading to an apology in a later issue from the author and magazine saying that they meant no offense to SF author F. M. Busby. Oops.

19

And of course, let’s not forget the Martian Manhunter, whose name is phonetically “John Jones”.

20

Mon-El was a super-powered being who met up with Superboy in Smallvile. He had amnesia, so Clark assumed he was another Kryptonian and named him Mon for Monday and El to be part of his family.

Monel metal was a nickel alloy that got a lot of use in WWII.