"Are Star (Trek) Fleet Ship Names Human Centric?" Topic

The Klingons in "The Undiscovered Country" accused the Federation of being a Humans Only club. Other than the shuttle Sarek in the original ST motion picture, there don't seem to be any Star Fleet ships named after non-human sources. So…

A. Yea, Star Fleet are a bunch of closet racists
B. Non-Human ship names are just translated to a close English analogue
C. No, there are plenty of examples of Star Fleet ships named from non-human sources
D. Get a life, its just a TV show

D.

How in the world would you come up with Andorrean or Tellerite (sp?) names without having to stop and explain the reference?

Stardate 12345.6, rendezvousing with USS Kraszplackl…

Don't different planets/people have their own ships? Aside from the occasional alien crew member on the human ships. Not that I was paying that close of attention.

I would imagine any far-flung, (really) multi-cultural conglomeration of rubber-foreheaded folk would be somewhat more like the 17th century Holy Roman Empire than that lot of naive humanist sci-fi TV writers would like to believe.

A. Speciests, not racists.

definitely D

YouTube link

D

Monitor or Merrimack?

D

In the original Star Trek series, the U.S.S. Intrepid (Constitution Class) had an entirely Vulcan crew. It was eaten by a giant space amoeba.

D,,, really???

B- ish

Aren't some Vulcan names unpronounceable to puny humans?

So clearly, they pick names that the weakest members among the Federation species can handle. :)

Dan

E. The Universal Translator turns all alien names into their English equivalents. Duh.

"Did you guys ever watch the show?"

The question has different answers depending on when the question is asked during the entire run of the Star Trek franchise.

c) (ish)

English is the dominant language of the Federation (and humans are the dominant species in Starfleet), and so "concept" names like Enterprise, Intrepid, Defiant, Repulse etc whilst being terra-centric, are probably acceptable to the non-human races in the Federation. The fact that these are various historical terran ships is "coincidental" ;).

There are enough alien "name" ships cropping up, like the USS Shran, USS T'Plana Hath etc., though by necessity these have to be notable aliens we have heard of.

With Discovery, we suddenly have an awful lot of astronaut names applied to ships.

Don't different planets/people have their own ships? Aside from the occasional alien crew member on the human ships. Not that I was paying that close of attention.

Well the different planets have their own ships, but Starfleet ships are all "human-like" So Vulcans have their own ship(cargo ships, personal ships, shuttles)

There was also an all Vulcan ship in DS9 called T'Kumbra, doesn't sound human-centric.

D – and don't forget Shakespeare is best in original Klingon.

A or D depending on your "world view" … or "galactic" view ?

F. Yes they are human centric and if don't like it, go join the other Federation.

I keep in mind that we're only looking at Star Fleet, not the Federation as a whole. Maybe all the scientific research stations have Vulcan names, but in the Fleet, the more belligerent humans predominate.

But has anyone done a Federation census? Maybe three quarters of the people with a military tradition are of Terran descent.

Time and time again they point out Earh and humanity is the major binding force of the federation and indeed starfleet is majority human.

I guess, D.

Writers can use ship names to quickly make a reference in an episode that the audience will get with no further explanation.

Or, more conceitedly, they use a name that has some appeal to them.

U.S.S. Krit%fugle probably doesn't do either.

Which class is the Krit%fugle?

Sounds like an Ewok class vessel to me. Oops. Wrong universe.

Dan

D

In light of what was established in "Enterprise", there should be a Constitution-class starship named Kumari, crewed by Andorians

There was also an all Vulcan ship in DS9 called T'Kumbra, doesn't sound human-centric.

"T'Kimbra" is Human-centric. It's the West Virginian interrogative for one male requesting another male friend to accompany him on a journey. Very friendly and space-faring.

Want to come, brother?
'ant to cm, bruh?
't-tuh kim bra?
T'Kimbra

Wasn't there a Klingon ship named 'Kronos'? Why are even the Klingons using human names?

Yes, the Klingons use a number of "human" or former human names and such. But again, e.g. the US military uses native American Indian names for it's some of it's helicopters, etc. … So … ?

Doing some research….we have:

The USS T'Kumbra, a Nebula-class ship
The USS Gorkon, a Excelsior-class ship
The USS Sarek, a Excelsior-class ship (not seen on screen)
The USS ShirKahr, a Miranda-class ship(destroyed)
The USS Sitak, a Miranda-class ship(destroyed)
The USS G'Mat, Unknown class (not seen on screen)
The USS D'hjty, Unknown class (not seen on screen)

Four of the seven are obviously Vulcan names, and one named after a Klingon(!) All of them appeared in DS9, except the Gorkon, which appeared in TNG. Three of the ships didn't even appear on screen.

STD added a few more alien-named ships, all with Vulcan names.

So a grand total of four-alien named ships ever appeared on-screen, half of which were Miranda-classes that immediately exploded. Not the best showing, to be honest…I do think they could have represented alien crews and ship names a lot better.

Good intel ! I remember some of those.