tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat May 06 16:44:01 1995
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Re: Choosing a Klingon name
- From: "Kevin A. Geiselman, Knight Errant" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Choosing a Klingon name
- Date: Sat, 6 May 1995 19:43:15 -0400 (EDT)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
There are several ways that I have seen used:
1) Translate something into tlhIngan Hol. charghwI' is a prime example
of such a name.
2) Use a naming convention from the Classic show or FASA. All the
Klingons in the old show had names that began with a K, such as Kor, Kang
and Koloth, or an M, such as Mara. "The Final Reflection" by John Ford
and FASA gaming material says that a Klingon will change his name when he
enters military service to reflect his change into a warrior. K is for
the navy, M is for the marines and an A would be for administrative or
scientific service.
3) Use a naming convention from the movies or the Next Generation. What
this really means is anything goes. Chang, Gorkon, Nu'Doq and a whole
slew of others don't follow any discernable pattern except that they like
apostrophies. A few captains retained the K in earlier TNG episodes or
Kruge and Klaa from ST3 and ST5. Also, the Klingons females from those
movies had V names, Valkris and Vixis.
My own choice relied on choice 2. The fine tradition of a K sound. At
the time I was playing the RPG and other crewmembers had already chosen
names. There was Captain Krouton and Commander Kevlar. A little silly
but what the hell! I chose Kordite. For those who don't know the
reference, cordite is a gunpowder. ("I love the smell of Kordite in the
morning," she said huskily. "It smells like. . .victory." [an excerpt
from a story I haven't written yet.])
Anyway, I have a program lying around for the UNIX that is a good name
generator. What you do is use a file of names and the program goes
through and calculates where the frequency of things are. It then prints
out a file of things that are similar. Put in a list of Roman names and
out comes a list of Roman type names. Put in Elvish, out comes elvish.
It even works with text. Put in Shakespeare and you get gibberish out,
but it's Shakesperean gibberish. The only problem is that the list of
Klingon names would be a touch small and so would not give out a decent
output.
If there is any interest I'll see if I can load it off the disk I have
and upload it to ftp.kli.org. It's pretty big and I've only got a 2400
bps modem. I'm not even sure it still works.
Lt.Cmdr. Kordite
Executive Officer, IKV Dark Justice, Klingon Assault Group