Yinrih astronyms

[early_riser@lemmy.world]

Originally, there was a taboo against giving names to stars and planets. When the planets were assumed to be "stars" in the sense meant by the Great Commandment, it was assumed that they bore sapient life and that the local sophonts would have their own perfectly good names for where they lived. To give them names would be tantamount to unjustly claiming ownership over them. The yinrih would just have to wait and see what those names were.

As astronomy advanced, it became clear that the local planets were lifeless, but cultural inertia kept the taboo in place. After The Shakeoff, the Neoshamanists gave them names as a way of rejecting the Great Commandment, and as the Lifebringers' terraforming tech became more and more feasible, indeed claiming ownership over them. They were drawn from the then-popular genre of planetary romances. In these stories a band of missionaries or party of adventurers would meet the local sophonts and learn their name for their world. It would be like humans deciding to call Venus Paralandra and Mars Barsoom. Most authors didn't give much thought to the etymologies of these names, so most were simply euphonious strings of sounds.

When the Neoshamanists began their terraforming efforts on a neighboring planet, and especially after other groups began staking their own claims to swaths of the planet's surface, it became necessary to refer to it in official documents. The taboo was still somewhat in force, so the Claravian majority gave it the non-name of "Newhome". By the time Newhome became livable, planetary romance had been a dead genre for a few generations, and some of the stories the names were sourced from were seen as painfully out of date if they weren't forgotten altogether.

Eventually, a numeric system was settled on for designating large bodies yet to be terraformed. Hearthside was given the number 1, Sweetwater 2, Yih 3, Newhome 4, Welkinstead 5, and Moonlitter 6. Secondaries to these bodies would be numbered from innermost orbit outward. Welkinstead's innermost moon would be 5-1, the next 5-2, and so on. Bodies such as dwarf planets and asteroids that orbited Focus itself were given serial numbers from a catalog. Whatever group terraformed a given body was given the right to name it and its numeric designation would be retired.

When the technologies to allow crewed interstellar voyages became feasible, about 10 thousand years after the Kindling, the newly founded missionaries came up with a different system for naming prospective habitable worlds. The naming taboo was still relevant to some degree, but they needed a way to refer to specific missions. The numeric system used for naming bodies at Focus had long since been extended to other stars. It's likely that Sol and Earth were given such numbers long long before they were identified as habitable by the missionaries. When a planet was marked for a visit, it would be given a flowery title that, it was hoped, would flatter any local sophonts. Such titles included "Beautiful Country", "Land of the Wise", "Breathtaking Vista" and so on. Earth's title was "Place of Unmet Friends".

Coincidentally, the Dewfall lands in semi-rural Texas. After establishing rudimentary communication with their human hosts, they ask what they call "this place." Of course, "this place" could refer to the room they were currently in, the small community college where the room was located, the town of Erickson where the college was located, etc. They were in fact asking about the name of the planet. Someone responds with "Texas". Then they ask what "Texas" means, and the human says it means "friend." Before they can be corrected they send several messages back home to Focus informing the rest of their species of this "Country of Friends", and the name ends up sticking as the common name for Earth.