History Main / LawOfAlienNames

APlanetNamedZok is a SubTrope. See also AVillainNamedZrg, PlanetOfHats, NameTron, XtremeKoolLetterz, and FantasticNamingConvention.

* ''Series/{{Tracker}}'' doesn't really have any consistency with alien names. Most are one- or two-syllable names with fairly simple sounds, even though they come from 6 different species. For example, the protagonist's name is Daggon, while the BigBad is Zin. An interesting case with Nestov, who is a Desserian. Except it's not his real name, nor is it Desserian in origin, as he faked his prison records and gave himself a Nodulian name and origin. His real name is unpronounceable and only spoken once, which is odd, since many other Desserian characters have fairly simple names. Of the three alien females shown, all end in "a": Sedra, Vedra, and Lontoria. Male names tend to end in consonants, except for the pilot episode villain Rhee, who is a male Vardian in a [[Wrestling/{{Chyna}} human woman]]'s body, and a Cirronian male named Reta. The GrandFinale shows some of these names written down in English, and the spelling isn't always straightforward, like with the name Yhir, which sounds more like "Yaheer" when spoken, or Tevv, which has double consonants for some reason.

'''Ed:''' [[OddNameOut Frusen Glädjé]].\\
'''Gordon:''' [[RunningGag Häagen-Dazs]].\\

* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'':

** In the ''ComicBook/WhoTookTheSuperOutOfSuperman'' storyline, Superman is bedeviled by an alien called Xviar.
** ''ComicBook/TheUntoldStoryOfArgoCity'': Back when he lived in Argo City, Zor-El fought a space monster called Zygor.
** In ''ComicBook/WayOfTheWorld'', Supergirl battles an alien conqueror called Dolok.

* Completely averted by Creator/JRRTolkien. The names of his characters are not only meaningful in the (invented) languages, but he also has complete pronunciation guides, and also ''multiple'' fantasy alphabets supplied. He even has [[ShownTheirWork rules for how the same letters are used for different languages]] (like how, say, Italian and English don't use the Roman alphabet in quite the same way).
** The languages and orthographies follow the "harshness of language = harshness of species" rule: the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin are very vowel-heavy with a lot of L's and R's; particularly Quenya, which looks and sounds a lot like Latin. Non-Elvish languages seem to go in a scale from softer to harsher as follows: [[{{Atlantis}} Adûnaic]], [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame Dwarvish]] (which in the first drafts of the mythology were an evil race, later becoming neutral, and only turning good when ''Literature/TheHobbit'' became canon) and then of course [[BlackSpeech Orkish / Black Speech]]. Harshness is also reflected in the different orthographies.[[labelnote: Such as:]]For Quenya, the spelling is quite based on Latin's (mind the hard C's and G's), with accents for long vowels; Sindarin sounds less like Latin, but also uses its conventions for C/G and long vowels, with extra-long vowels marked with a circumflex. The harsher languages invariably use K instead of C and use circumflexes for simple long vowels.[[/labelnote]] As noted on the BlackSpeech page, Tolkien had Irish Gaelic in mind for the language of Mordor, which he found "utterly unlovely" and said language was notably created in universe by Sauron himself. Tokien deliberately created his languages to reflect his own aesthetic opinions on language and speech.

* ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' gives us Vl'hurgs, G'Gugvunts and Silastic Armourfiends of Striterax (whose army is called something even scarier), though Douglas Adams was deliberately and famously [[RefugeInAudacity having fun with this trope]] throughout the series. He also parodied it with Trillian, which sounds at first to the audience like an alien name, but we soon find out the character is actually a human woman from modern-day Earth, and she just has an odd nickname (it's short for Tricia [=McMillan=]). He also dips into various different aesthetics of science fiction for his alien names - Zaphod Beeblebrox's name is supposed to sound RaygunGothic, 'Vogon' is supposed to sound a bit ''Doctor Who'', Hotblack Desiato is supposed to sound like a character from a dystopian science-fiction story, and so on.

** The [[WitchSpecies Altmer (High Elves)]] and [[ForestRanger Bosmer (Wood Elves)]] have naming conventions which borrow from [[Creator/JRRTolkien Tolkien]]'s Quenya and Sindarin {{Con Lang}}s, respectively. Altmer names to be very vowel heavy with lots of "-il," "-ar," and the like suffixes (ex. Angoril, Ancotar, etc.). Bosmer names use a lot of "th" sounds, plus plenty of "d's, f's and g's" surrounded by soft vowels (ex. Glarthir, Fargoth, Enthir, etc.). According to supplemental materials of in-universe [[UnreliableNarrator questionable accuracy]], Altmer names are actually [[YouAreNumberSix complex strings of numbers]] that merely ''sound'' like a name if you aren't fluent in their language.

** Individually, they almost never have their own names, but start with a D, add a vowel, next an L, another vowel, and finish with a K: Dalek.

'''Ed:''' Frusen Glädjé.\\
'''Gordon:''' [[OddNameOut Häagen-Dazs]].\\

* The Ctarl-Ctarl in ''Manga/OutlawStar'' also reduplicate, like their ambassador Aisha Clan-Clan and their flagship the Orta Hone-Hone.

** Start with a D, a vowel, next an L, another vowel, and finish with a K: Dalek.

** Dalek.

** Then again, the languages and orthographies very much follow the "harshness of language = harshness of species" rule: the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin are very vowel-heavy with a lot of L's and R's; particularly Quenya, which looks and sounds a lot like Latin. Non-Elvish languages seem to go in a scale from softer to harsher as follows: [[{{Atlantis}} Adû]][[AndManGrewProud naic]], [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame Dwarvish]] (which in the first drafts of the mythology were an evil race, later becoming neutral, and only turning good when ''Literature/TheHobbit'' became canon) and then of course [[BlackSpeech Orkish / Black Speech]]. Harshness is also reflected in the different orthographies.[[labelnote: Such as:]]For Quenya, the spelling is quite based on Latin's (mind the hard C's and G's!), with accents for long vowels; Sindarin sounds less like Latin, but also uses its conventions for C/G and long vowels, with extra-long vowels marked with a circumflex. The harsher languages invariably use K instead of C and use circumflexes for simple long vowels.[[/labelnote]]

* In ''Manga/SgtFrog'', the Keronian race and a select few from other alien races have names that adhere strictly to an ABB rhyming pattern. Keroro, Giroro, Tamama, Kururu, Dororo, you get the idea. (Keroro and the Keronians are probably also puns on the word ''kerokero'', which means "croak" or "ribbit".)

* Franchise/{{Superman}}'s cousin is named Kara, which is an example of the trope, but an odd one in that the name became popular in English as an actual name after the introduction of the character, to the point where on ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' she just calls herself Kara and there's nothing weird about the name. In truth, it isn't actually alien, rather of Proto-Italo-Celtic origin (Italian "beloved", Irish "friend"), but as stated above, it was hardly ever used as a given name until long after ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} made it popular.
* In the ''ComicBook/WhoTookTheSuperOutOfSuperman'' storyline, Superman is bedeviled by an alien called Xviar.

*** The ''Literature/{{Rihannsu[}'' novels by Creator/DianeDuane manage to invert this trope with the Vulcans and Romulans. The peaceful Vulcans are the ones with with the guttural language full of harsh consonants, while Romulan speech is vowel-heavy and downright Elvish.

*** The ''Literature/Rihannsu'' novels by ''Creator/DianeDuane'' manage to invert this trope with the Vulcans and Romulans. The peaceful Vulcans are the ones with with the guttural language full of harsh consonants, while Romulan speech is vowel-heavy and downright Elvish.

'''Gordon:''' [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers Häagen-Dazs]].\\

Unless the setting as a whole has some kind of ThemeNaming (like [[Franchise/DragonBall all the villains in an arc are refrigeration equipment or musical instruments]]), anime aliens often seem to have repeated sounds in their names. It might be because Japanese onomatopoeia tend to be reduplicated like that (they use them for a lot more things than sounds, e.g. "shibu-shibu" means "reluctantly"), and the reduplicated words in alien speech are meant to symbolize [[StarfishLanguage a collection of inhuman sounds]].