The Star Trek Names We’re Glad the Franchise Forgot
One of the secret strengths of Star Trek is that the franchise is filled with memorable and colorful names that help set it apart from other sci-fi. Such names also helped Trek become a pop culture phenomenon to the point that people who have never watched a single episode still know what Klingons and Vulcans are. However, Star Trek as a franchise has often used really awful names for its most iconic aliens and their cultures, and we’re frankly glad that nobody uses names like “Vulcanian” anymore.
Vulcanians
In fact, any discussion about mercifully forgotten Star Trek names has to start with “Vulcanians.” As you’ve probably guessed, this was a term that was often used to refer to Spock’s people in the first season of The Original Series.
This all goes back to a pamphlet prepared by NBC to tell various stations what the franchise was about; in it, Spock’s father is identified as coming from the planet “Vulcanis” and his people are referred to as “Vulcanians.”
Klingonese
Soon, that Star Trek name became part of ancient history, and “Vulcan” became a term used for the aliens, their planet, and even their language. Speaking of languages, the Klingon language was once referred to as “Klingonese,” which is a pretty goofy term for this mighty warrior race.
The term was used in the classic Original Series episode “The Trouble With Tribbles” and even used by Quark in the Deep Space Nine episode “Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places,” but it mostly faded into the background, and Klingon became (as with the Vulcans) the name of both the language and the aliens.
Bajora And Trillian
Speaking of Deep Space Nine, that show extensively features Bajorans and Bajoran culture. However, these famous Star Trek aliens alternately went by another name in The Next Generation: “the Bajora.”
That name was used in the first season of DS9 before the show dropped it, presumably because it sounds so goofy compared to “Bajorans.”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine once referred to another popular group of aliens by a different name that was (to our intense relief) immediately dropped. In this franchise, trills like Dax come from the planet Trill, and we have seen more of that planet and its government as recently as Discovery. In the DS9 episode “Dax,” this was referred to as the “Trillian” government, but the term was never used again, most likely due to it sounding like the number “trillion.”
Universal Translator
While all of these Star Trek names are very different, they all have something in common–they sound incredibly stupid, and the franchise is better for having dropped them. Of course, some fans like to try to find in-universe reasons for why characters would use a term one season and then stop using it the next.
A popular theory is that the Universal Translator is making adjustments over time for us watching at home, basically overriding outdated terms as newer ones come into fashion.
Things Of The Past
Whether you want to credit the Star Trek writers or the in-universe technology, the bottom line is that all of the names we’ve covered eventually became a thing of the past. The newer terms simply sound more natural and are far less embarrassing. For example, we’d be insanely embarrassed to keep a post about the “Klingonese” language in our room.
But a poster about the Klingon language? That’s so sexy and turns so many heads that it might as well be our own personal horga’hn.
