Ambiguous Name: A Planet Named Zok

Yeah. I would phrase it as "Should this trope be narrowed down to <description> and all other items moved to Descriptiveville?".

I think everybody is agreed that this page is two tropes ("planet with a name like Zrgk" and "planet with a descriptive name"). The question at hand is whether the latter is the trope Descriptive Ville or a to-be-YKTTW-d new trope.

In that case, I just say that no, Descriptive Ville for planets is not YKTTW-worthy.

That is my opinion as well. I believe the best approach here would be to redefine this trope as "planet with a name like Zgr" and move examples of "planet with a descriptive name" to Descriptive Ville (which already covers pretty much all other geography with a descriptive name). Easy enough, problem solved.

That sounds like the simplest solution. It's also not a bad one.

I still think moving the non-Zrg examples to Descriptiveville is a bad idea. It just doesn't really fit without renaming Descriptiveville - it conveys the name of a town, but not something as big as a planet.

I'm inclined to agree with this. There's a slightly different feel for the "planet" version covered here (for one thing, it's more parodic).

Towns and Planets are about the same size, for most story-purposes. Or at least, planets with these kinds of names, which often serve as a one-shot joke. I don't think there's any narrative difference, especially if the trope is already expanded to include countries.

I think it's just a matter of scale. Star Trek travels between planets. Your random adventurer travels between towns, or on a slightly larger scale, countries. They're all basically locations where a single trait is pronounced enough to serve as a name.

Fast tengu is fast.

edited 11th Jun '13 10:36:43 PM by AnotherDuck

Still don't agree on a distinction. I do not recall a trend like the one described on @32.

Tropes Are Not Narrow. The trope for "ville" already covers e.g. "countries", so that name should not be taken literally. And I do not see the trend alleged in #32 either.

It just irks me for some reason that I can't really describe.

Basically, I think descriptively-named planets will always be played for laughs in a way that isn't necessarily true for Descriptivevilles. There's a specific parody of Planet of Hats involved that's not present in the larger trope.

edited 12th Jun '13 1:19:02 PM by nrjxll

Got any evidence for that?

Looking at the two pages, I don't see very many parodic examples on Descriptiveville, while all of the "Hatulon" examples on A Planet Named Zok - and I don't actually see many listed - seem to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as are the others brought up in this thread.

On an unrelated note, can anyone tell me what exactly this paragraph means?

In short, "we call fictional alien planet names "weird", our planet names are just as "weird", making it seemingly hypocritical on our part, but really it has a justifiable reason behind its name".

Well, that's kind of silly - I don't think there's a pressing need to defend the name "Mars" from criticism by fictional aliens, and the same thing would presumably be true for most of the examples anyway. The page isn't even about "weird" names (which would be basically meaningless) in the first place; it's about a specific naming convention.

edited 12th Jun '13 10:03:12 PM by nrjxll

The real planets, moons, asteroids, stars, and whatnot we've named have been named so for reasons, usually after mythological characters. That is, the names weren't made up. They already existed.

Planets in fiction named Zok or whatever are named so simply because they sounds alien. It signifies an unknown place with potentially an unknown culture.

That's really not how the paragraph reads, though, at least going by that description. It honestly comes across as defensive in a really silly way. I don't think the trope needs comparison to real planet names at all.

There's nothing wrong with Mars. Just delete that.

Done.

Getting back on the main topic, does everyone still think that the "Descriptulon" examples are the same thing as Descriptiveville?

I do.

Same for me.

...why would everyone suddenly change their minds for no reason? I would naturally assume that their "votes" remain the same unless they come back here and tell us they're changing their mind.