Planets having similar names to eachother

This is a thread that could pretty much go anywhere so I just decided to put it in the tv section since it was the Rebels tv show yesterday that made me think of it.

As we can tell many of the planets listed so far in the Star Wars Universe have pretty similar names to eachother Dantooine/Tatooine, Alderaan/Onderon are just a couple I can think of off the top of my head but I am sure there are many others.

Out of universe it makes complete sense why they sound similar because when trying to think of names for new planets Lucas (and anyone else who has told stories in the universe up to this point) would just take the name of a planet that already existed in Star Wars and think of something similar.

I'm wondering if it makes much since in universe though? In legends hyperdrive had been around for 25/30,000 years I believe and I believe there were several instances where planets changed names over the years and that would give a good reason for having similar names with all the people who would have been traveling and moving around the galaxy for that long of period of time and bringing their own culture to the new planets.

In canon we don't really know how long yet the hyperdrive has been around up to this point. We can assume it has been at least a couple thousand years (as Darth Bane and the Sith and Mandalorian Wars and the formation of the Republic and Jedi Order could have only happened after the invention of the hyperdrive).

I guess that is a lot of time as well but there is a big difference between 25,000 years and just a few thousand. By the point of 3,000 BBY you would think planets and cultures would be much more established on particular planets then they would have been in 25,000 BBY and the name that people formed for the planet already would be much tougher to get rid of.

Moved to Lit

 

Well as far as Tatooine and Dantooine, AFAIK both are Outer Rim planets whose only native sentients are "primitive" cultures whose opinions larger galactic society doesn't care about and the actual settling and naming was done entirely by offworlders. So the names could very easily just both be in Huttese or something, with "-tooine" being a shared word and the first syllable being some sort of different descriptor.

As far as Alderaan and Onderon and the like, that's a much more superficial similarity and could be entirely coincidence. I mean, in a galaxy of trillions of planets, people don't need to intentionally change their planet's name for a few to sound vaguely alike. It's just going to happen.

Look at what we have right here on earth http://mentalfloss.com/article/50209/5-pairs-countries-americans-confuse

 

or Coruscant and *****scant

 

In real life we have many countries with similar names (The "stans" such as Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, ect.) You can find similar patterns in countries that aren't even near each other and don't seem to have any historical connection (Colombia, Australia, Bulgaria).

Besides the "ooines" and "Alderaan/Onderon", I can only think of one other example in Star Wars of planets having similar names: the "Ord" prefix as in "Ord Mantell". I believe the Essential Atlas established this as an artifact from the Republic establishing "Ordanance/Regional Depot(s)" on different worlds.

 

Really? That's what they went with for Ord? This is why the EU had to die. Overexplained stupidity.

My personal favourite is the world in Chronicles of the Gatekeeper - Arbooine. It's an outer rim planet... with trees everywhere!

 

Eh, I liked the Ord explanation, especially as it had become non-caps. Much like a lot of US towns are called "Fort" something from starting as an annex to a military base.

 

If the Republic was so ham-fisted to use American military terminology by calling something an "Ordinance/Recon Depot" - because often the act of storing materiel goes hand in hand with the act of observing an enemy outpost from a distance so as to ascertain strategic advantage - then Palpatine was a bloody hero for bringing it down.

Moving the idea away from Americanised, unimaginative and clumsy acronyms - have you considered the Romantic language habit of naming cities after Saints? San Marino, in Italy - named after Saint Marinus. Saint-Étienne, near Lyon, in France. The scores of communes across France named after Saint-Germain (and of course Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris' 6th Arrondissement).

What if Ord was a title of some significance, and the planets were named in that favour? Sure, it is not as insipid an allegory for the modern world as Del Rey was used to, but that's my fault or something.

 

As JediBatman said, it's Ordnance/Regional Depot, not Ordnance/Recon Depot. If it were "recon" it WOULD be weird, but the act of storing matériel regionally is commonplace.

It wasn't Del Rey that came up with the term. It dates at least as far back as WEG's 1997 Pirates & Privateers, possibly further. And I don't see any reason why having "Ord" be analogous to "Saint" is any better than having it be analogous to "Fort."

 

I've long advocated the headcanon that "-ooine," "-on," and "-aan" are all differently transliterated versions of the same stem that means "place" or "world" like "-istan" or "-land" or "-berg."

 

There's no reason not to have both Ender. Not only does England have the -caster/-chester towns named after Roman forts, as Jello aptly noted, there's also any location ending in -bury/-borough/-burg, for fortified place, caer-/car- for a non-Roman fort, dun-/dum-/don-, more Irish/Scots for a fort, etc etc, to name some UK ones. I'm sure there's some examples from around the globe as well, though I'm not versed enough to name them.

 

And nobody out there considers those places of great wonder.

The more we modernise Star Wars, the worse it becomes. I know Ord was a name for years, but giving it the ham-fisted acronym origin is just embarrassing. It is the kind of thing that shames fandom and is no better than the Darth Vader armour nonsense that Red Letter so deservedly mocked.

And I mean, given the opportunity to think big, we think procedurally. Given the opportunity for romanticism, we take basically linguistic brutalism. Given the chance to create mythology, they create bureaucracy.

This is why it's great that Legends is dead. It deserved it.

 

If you don't find the Salisbury Plain or Glastonbury Tor to be places of great wonder, then there are simply no places of great wonder in England.

 

It's a bloody hill with an old tower on it! You have a city that dates back to the height of the Roman Empire as the capital and the reference point is a rounded piece of land with some stone atop it?

But come on. The idea it has just evolved from a military acronym is infantile, silly, and ridiculous. I'd love it now that legends has been clubbed to death (lol) if they invented something appropriately wondrous for the name "Ord".

 

Isn't Tatooine said be named after Bestine somewhere?

 

Yeah, this!

There's a city on Tatooine named Bestine.

 

Well, the capital is amazing, but I don't associate it with wonder, per se, certainly not as much as, say, a certain henge on the Salisbury Plain. But if that floats your wonderboat ... it *was* referred to as "Cair Lundem" at one point.

I don't see how something evolving from a military acronym is any of those things.

And you might love it, but I sure wouldn't. Star Wars is a lived-in universe. I want names for things that are suitably pedestrian for that concept, at least some of the time.

Tatooine has a major settlement named after Bestine.

 

You're right, the idea of some sort of naming convention based on people of antiquity is fundamentally at odds of the notion of a lived-in universe. Thumbs up.

 

Honestly, I kind of like the idea that the Old Republic was so vast and so ancient that something that is as utterly banal as one of its bureaucratese acronyms became a permanent part of the names of a dozen planets.

 

That's a very personal question and I'll permit you to stay out of my affairs.

Though having said that,

1) the high street evokes the English city, which is nice, and



2) Look at your Empire now!

 

But that origin of Ord is playing on a kind of mythologized history. The American West. When the frontier was marked by Fort This and Fort That and brave people set out from there to make a living or make a life. To push the boundaries of "civilization" until they died like in Oregon Trail.

 

Another pair I'd call out is Dagobah and Xagobah. Was there ever an explanation given for that?


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Darth duck, America also has cities called Mechanicsberg. I mean i feel like aiming for the bottom of the barrel isn't what Star Wars needs.