Human beings love to name things. We kind of have to, really, unless we want to continually refer to them generically as “doodad” or “the thing on my foot” or “that guy right there”. It’s much easier to use words like “phone” and “cinder block” and “Steve”. Names are really just a natural result of how we use language. If you want to talk about something specific, you give it a name.
Where names get interesting is when they refer to geography. While most English-speaking modern humans agree that the land mass I’m sitting on right now is called “North America”, I’m pretty sure that’s not what the Cherokee called it. It’s also called something different in Spanish and French. This is all to say that naming geographic entities is a completely subjective process. You’re going to refer to something in a way that means something to you. It’s kind of unfair to ask you to refer to a continent you don’t live on by the same name as the people living there do.
Where naming really gets absurd, though, is when we apply it to astronomy. There is no way that the beings inhabiting the moons of Epsilon Tauri B call Epsilon Tauri B “Epsilon Tauri B”. They also don’t refer to their sun as “Epsilon Tauri”. Hell, they probably don’t even know they’re in the constellation of Taurus. From where they’re sitting, they certainly can’t tell they’re in a pattern of stars that look like a bull. To us. From here.
What’s interesting to me, though, is what they call us. It sure as hell isn’t “earth” which orbits “the sun”. (I’ve heard our sun referred to as Sol, but I think that’s strictly an Earth term.) To them, we’re on an insignificant planet orbiting an insignificant star that’s in a constellation that we can’t see because we’re in it. Maybe they refer to us as “Insignifica C”. Perhaps it’s something totally generic, like “393789340343118″ (using whatever number system they use, of course). Maybe they have a naming convention similar to ours and they call us something like “Beta Oonat 3″ because we’re the third planet orbiting the second brightest start in the constellation Oonat. (What’s an Oonat? No idea. We’re in a constellation that’s a dead ringer for one, though. ) It could be something more ominous, like “Target 4861″. Maybe, though, just maybe, they know a lot more about us than we think. Maybe they know more about us than we know about ourselves. What if they’re the ones seeded life on earth four billion years ago? (You didn’t know about that one, did you?) In that case, we’re probably known as something like “Experiment #46″.
You know, if we are an experiment being performed by vastly superior race, I’m sure they’re listening to our broadcasts much like we’re trying to listen to theirs. I can hear them now:
“Oer-Neg, come look at this.”
“What is it, Gron-Fube?”
“Transmission from Experiment #46. Something they call “American Idol”.”
“Barna gorframs! We should probably terminate that one before they can leave the planet and infect anything else!”
“Okay. Any chance we can wait until the season is over?”
On October 22nd, 2008 at 9:14 pm Rich said:
Did you get the medicine cabinet unlocked again? You rascal.
On October 22nd, 2008 at 9:58 pm jeff said:
I laughed out loud at ” Target 4861.”