Unclear Definition: Law Of Alien Names

Note: This thread was proposed by Number 9 Robotic.

Straight-up: I have no idea what the titular "Law of Alien Names" is supposed to be. This trope has been around since 2008, there's a description, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it's actually definitively about, and it's been evidently confusing people since as early as 2010 based on its Discussion page, and thus use of it has been extremely inconsistent.

Judging by the page description, the "correct" form of Law of Alien Names is a mishmash of several phonetic tropes stuffed into one, and some of them are optional. At its basest form:

• Start a name with a consonant.
• Add vowel.
• Add L, M, N, or R (phrased very clumsily as "The next letter will be either an R or an L (sometimes both) or either an M or N").
• Another vowel.
• Another "R/L/M/N" or "substituted with another consonant, usually something soft" (so basically any other letter???)

Right off the bat, this feels both too specific and also too vague. By that logic, "Riley", "Caleb", "Dylan", "Lauren", and "Paris" are sufficient alien names. Then we get all the exceptions and additional qualifiers that make it even less of a singular "law":

• For female characters, add "-a" or "-ia" to the end of the name (this gets mentioned in two separate lines)
• For "warrior race" characters, end with D, K, R, or T, but also can add any "hard consonants" anywhere (so again, many letters are okay as long as it sounds "harsh" and so the D/K/R/T thing isn't even a rule).
• Add Punctuation Shaker whenever, no real rules in this law.
• For elves, add D, Dh, L, R, M, N, Th or V anywhere. Also end with L or N, I guess. Also make the name 7 letters or longer.
• Also for whatever, double vowels.
• Something something harsh letters for harsh races and the Sonority Sequencing Principle.
• If you're Japanese in specific, you make Repetitive Names and conflate R and L together (which isn't a law or a guideline, that's just a statement of fact).

Oof.

This description is just a pure car crash that it was hard for me to even write a proper wick check on this as everything about it is so vague and arbitrary, thus hard to find a vector to approach wicks with. I still tried to do my best with it, here's what I got in my wick check:

• (0/50, 0%) Provides description of the name/names and follow the main rules more or less "correctly"
• (7/50, 14%) Provides description of the name/names but doesn't follow the main rules
• (2/50, 4%) Uses the trope to establish a work's own naming conventions for alien characters
• (13/50, 26%) ZCE (literally just listing a name/names with no further elaboration)
• (19/50, 38%) ZCE (describing some trends but no name examples provided)
• (5/50, 10%) Listing "aversions"
• (4/50, 8%) Other forms of misuse (4/50)

Couldn't find any examples that use the rules correctly, and a vast majority of these entries establish no understanding of what the trope is supposed to mean and thus seem to use it as "an alien has a name." This is so ill-defined that I don't think there's any consistent naming phenomenon that it can be reworked to cover; this trope seems like a hard cut for me.

• Wonder Woman (1942): The name of the war obsessed alien Commander Kel-X manages to combine multiple harsh sounds. No second vowel.
• Savior of Demons: Haabu is an example of the double-vowel subtype, though this is because his name is a pun on haboob - instead of double o's, the author wrote him with double a's instead to obscure the pun. Doesn't fit the "end on consonant" rule.
• On the Edge of Eureka: The Northern Mira, generally being more violent, have harsher names and a more guttural language. The Southern Mira generally have sweeter, more vowel-heavy names. Northern Mira include Cadé Maru and Jahin Svare, while Southern Mira include Raeilya, Chiramel, and Ararien Æshiel. The Southerners are closer allies to Eleutheria.
  • Averted with Faradayers, who mostly have a blend of several different names. Incorrect addition of aversions in main page.
• Blakes Seven S 3 E 3 Volcano: Pyroans come from a planet with a supervolcano. Pyro is the Greek word for fire. '''That's just Theme Naming.
• Tracker S1E22 "Remember When": We finally see how some of the alien names are spelled. Some are pretty straightforward (Mederan, Remel, Krace, Vedra, and Jagar), while others aren't (Tevv, Yhir, Sirez, and Rhee).
• Tropes K To L: 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 Smallville she just calls herself Kara and there's nothing weird about the name. In truth, it is not 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 Supergirl started.
• FTL: Faster Than Light: Played With, since the default name pool seems to apply to all characters regardless of species. This sometimes creates weird situations like having a female human called Pipaluk and a genderless Engi called Elizabeth on the same ship. Played Straight with alien NPCs, however; the Mantis in particular stand out, with names like KazaaakplethKilik.

• Space Rangers: The Maloqs have a lot of R and voiced stops (b, d, g) in their names (and their planet names etc.), Pelengs have a lot of "ts", "ch", "sh" sounds, Faeyans have a lot of l, m, n, f, p and y sounds and Gaalians have a lot of doubled vowels (such as "Gaaldok", "Raalito", etc.).
• Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: The Luminoth have names like U-Mos, A-Kul, and other variations that involve a letter, dash, then three more letters. There is also U-Mos' mother V-Mos, so the second part might be like a last name.

• Nexus: Most of the aliens have names like Dave, Fred, Sinclaire, and Tyrone. Fred converts to Judaism and changes his name to Judah.
• Solar Opposites: Korvo and Yumyulack.
• Superman vs. Muhammad Ali: The villains are a warlike alien race called "Scrubb".
• Comic Book/Supergirl: Pothole. Thus was born Supergirl - a.k.a. Kara Zor-El, Kal-El's cousin.
• Way of the World: At one alternate timeline, Supergirl battles an alien conqueror called Dolok.
• Hellsister Trilogy: In addition to canonical names like Kal, Kara, Dev, Tanya, Garth, Ayla... it has Highfather's daughter D’reema.
• Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough: The named aliens are Xaxikromph and Xanzicon.
• Bob Lennon: Pothole. In the 54th episode, revolving around the making of a bad sci-fi movie, he made up an entire complex plot about the lore of the movie, including such elements as a millennium war between Zainax and Poulpax [...]
• DaThings: Pothole. "May I introduce myself, AlsaSluggles. And don't forget the name. Also merged pothole.
• Stargate Atlantis S01 E01E02 "Rising": Teyla; Toran; Jinto; Halling.
• Doctor Who The Enemy Of My Enemy: Sherri, aka Ba'ål-na'avz`jyiu♫♩δra M'ik'k'k'k^lun Johnson
• Tropes G to L: Hilariously exaggerated in his review of The X-Files pilot episode when the FBI section chief asks how a case involving the paranormal would be prosecuted.
  SF Debris: I point you to the disastrous case of Kramer vs. Gelavan-pah-doi!-doi!-bloop-ooh-ueh-fwuh-whoop-whulululululuh which showed how difficult jurisdiction can be in establishing these cases.
• Chronos Twin: Look at Aerith and Bob above, and then there's the player character's species name: Llhedar.

• Mass Effect Race Tropes Native Andromeda Races: Datapads found in the Exaltation Facility show individual kett do have names. When translated into English, they're largely absent of consonants. No examples of names, plus the absence of consonants is pretty much a total inverse of the trope descriptions that emphasize the importance of consonants.
• Star Wars – Mid Rim: Of course, their names look like a bunch of Wookiee growls on paper, but they're actually pronounced "Dakota", "Deliah", and "Wyatt", respectively.
• Wonder Woman: Allies: With even the standard -a tacked on the end to denote a female name.
• Albedo: Erma Felna EDF: Used here in full force, with some exceptions. (Including the titular heroine)
• Edmond Hamilton: Hamilton kinda invented his own one - his aliens' names tend to consist of two monosyllabic parts.
• Doctor Who: Pothole. Dave Ross — boringified name for Davros.
• Gentlemen Broncos: Discussed. Chevalier orders his class of young writers to name their characters things like this, insisting a girl rename her character, Teacup, Tylonious.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Pothole. Aerith and Bob: Aliens in the series tend to follow the Law of Alien Names but robots and computers tend to have human names like Marvin, Eddie and Colin.
• No More Heroes: Lots (this is a fantasy universe which also contains a section of a Lovecraftian universe)
• Right Hand of God: Pretty much all the Slydrinothgmnackian's names (including the name of the alien race itself) are pretty much letters thrown together to look alien. Well, except Fred's.
• Sholan Alliance: Apparently the author simply used a name generating program for the alien names.
• Space Brat: Played as straight as humanly possible.
• Star Trek: Ex Machina: Fabrini/Lorini names have three syllables, typically consisting of alternating vowels and consonants.
• Sgt. Frog: The Keronian naming pattern, "A-B-B".
• The Burkiss Way: One of the show's Hitchhiker's spoofs involves a narrator talking about the Omni-Quargs of the planet Sargo-Sworreldong, in the star system of Grudnivogarr-Actinax, in the constellation of Go-And-Upset-Another-Scrabble-Board-Les-I-Need-A-New-Name.
• Stargate SG 1 S 10 E 8 Memento Mori: Lampshaded by Vala when Mitchell is trying to convince her she's an alien.
• The Orville: Lampshaded in "Krill," when Ed and Gordon try to come up with a list of plausible Krill names. When they actually meet the Krill, Ed's mind goes blank, and he ends up calling themselves "Chris" and "Devin' respectively. Fortunately, while it causes some Krill to raise their eyebrows, they don't make anything of it.
• Stylistic Suck/Webcomics: Pothole. One of Rose's journals contains Complacency of the Learned, a 'creative writing exercise' full of excessive Purple Prose, ridiculous names, turgid Inner Monologue narration, Mixed Metaphors and plenty of Info Dump abuse. It could also qualify as a parody of H. P. Lovecraft.
• Tropes K To L: While all of the series' races (playable or otherwise) have their own Fantastic Naming Conventions, the races of Mer (Elves) and the {{Beast |Man}}races are quite alien. See the trope page for a full breakdown and description. Improper referral to other pages.

• Evil Alien Conquerors: Averted, the aliens are named My-Ik, Du-Ug, Pe-Ny, and Ja-An. The only two strange names are Revere (which may be a title, as he's the alien King) and Croker (which isn't too far off from Kroeger).
• K-PAX: Averted. The (uncapitalized) "prot" is a vowel shorter than its pronunciation would imply.
• Where Are They?: Averted. The name of the titular alien of Look for Laura isn't alien, its just Latin.
• Tomes & Talismans: Completely averted. Not only are the Users and Wipers themselves given descriptive names, even used by the aliens as Translation Convention, but both the Wipers' home system and the one Earth's people evacuate to are called, respectively, the Dark Star and White Crystal solar systems—clearly named by the humans who discovered them, and just as clearly not showing much scientific acumen or imagination. Some of this may be justified, however, by the aesop and meta purpose of the show: by translating everything into English and allowing humans and Users to instantly understand each other, as well as the past histories of both Users and Wipers, it allows the characters to focus on research and education, and makes it easier for them to learn what they need to in order to win instead of time being lost or bogged down in complex issues of language and communication. So, less about linguistic realism and more about the symbolism and morality of the series—by making it easier for the characters to understand each other and get along, the writers emphasize that underneath it all, we're really all the same. And to judge from the books written about Wipers thanks to members of the race who performed a Heel–Face Turn and interbred with humans, it's entirely possible that the cultures and languages are more compatible than would seem on the surface.
• BIONICLE: This was slightly averted in Mata Nui Online Game 2, where there were many names given to every character in the game, many of whom had never been seen previously, and — being mostly background characters — mostly did not appear in subsequent stories. There were some human-seeming names (albeit slightly modified), such as Kai and Marka. There were a few which don't seem to fit perfectly in either world, such as Nixie.

• Chippy: His name starting with an X bodes well to his tyrannical disposition.
• MCU: Cosmic: Inverted. He has a name that would be common in an English-speaking Earth country despite being an alien.
• XEVOZ: Subverted. "Xevoz" is the only alien word used for some reason. This seems 1) more like an aversion, and 2) not worth documenting, period.
• Galactik Football: Subverted. The aliens tend to have names like Warren and Nealy while the human characters are called Micro Ice, Aarch and D'Jok.