I agree. I actually came here to bring this up, and I'm glad I'm not the only person who's noticed this. If the examples given are any indication, ANY alien name can qualify for this trope, whether the names are "boring and similar" or not. Many of the examples seem like aversions to me. I keep reading them and thinking, "This is ridiculous! If all of these qualify, anything can qualify! Apparently there's no such thing as a good, original, realistic alien name! Either it's too human-sounding or it's too alien-sounding! Or it's too short, or it's too long! Or it's too hard to pronounce, or it's too easy to pronounce! What is going on here???" I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone!
The description itself makes it clear what constitutes playing the trope straight, at least at first, but then it seems to veer off the point a bit, and then doesn't tell us what would constitute an aversion. That might be helpful.
EDIT: Also, the description doesn't make it clear if the part of the trope about feminine names and masculine names even applies if the aliens in question are completely genderless and sexless. I would think it wouldn't count – because then the distinction would be meaningless, and would only be relevant to humans, who would automatically associate the names they heard with maleness or femaleness.
Edited by NoriMori
Happy New Year!
I'll noticed that all the examples are from english language works. i don't suppose a bilingual troppers know what the 'alien' conventions are in any other languages?
hashtagsarestupid
Seems to me this page is getting confused. The description is about a particular style of alien names — harsh consonants, especially velars, for males and proud warrior races; soft consonants, especially liquids, for females and airy-fairy bunny races. But then quite a few of the cases cited as straight examples are actually aversions — pretty convincing as possible names from a non-existent language while avoiding the above stereotypes. For instance, Yukabacera from Iji, for all that it contains a single /k/, is hardly a "harsh"-sounding name. Krotera has the harsh /k/ but ends in a soft -a. In fact, the closest Iji comes to fitting this trope is Iosa, whose name fits the "soft = female" side (her surname is Sakera, for crying out loud!) — which is a subversion, as her personality is anything but.
Edited by Vilui Hide / Show Replies