who would be right?

[Stargazer2600]

So I was reading about all the new earth like planets we found and i got a interesting idea. We call the little rock we live on Earth. It's the name we gave it and the name we know it by. Lets say however that we find other life, like 2-4 different species of alien life and we find out that this whole time, they knew about us and the universe more or less has a different name for earth. Who would be right? Would it be us since we live here? or would it be the life outside our home, who could be older than us and with the other species, have already named our planet?

interesting thought, please discuss

Edited February 23, 2017 by Stargazer2600

[Shadiochao]

I don't think either would be wrong. We'd continue to call our planet by the name we gave it, but we'd also acknowledge that the aliens know it by another name.

 

There are many countries that have different names depending on which language is being used, so I imagine it'd be a similar situation.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

25 minutes ago, Shadiochao said:

I don't think either would be wrong. We'd continue to call our planet by the name we gave it, but we'd also acknowledge that the aliens know it by another name.

 

There are many countries that have different names depending on which language is being used, so I imagine it'd be a similar situation.

 

This, people from Napoli aren't going to call their city something else just because we all say "Napels".

 

Yes it's silly that we named our planet after dirt and that we called one moon "Moon", but that's what we did now and changing it would be a hassle, just like changing to a better way of using days than a 7 day week with 365 days in a year (I'd go with a ten day week, a three day weekend and 36.5 weeks in a year, that .5 together with the leap years would allow for enough changing of dates) or different measurements for time (24-60-60, really? can't we just do something in base ten?). It's better to stick with "I'm from Earth" than to say "I'm from Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha".

 

Mostly when discovering new species (or just different humans on Earth), the norm is to adhere to whatever they called their region so aliens would probably respect our naming conventions, perhaps changing it a wee little bit just like the translation conventions named above. Otherwise, you'd get a situation like the native Americans being called Indians because Columbus thought he went to India... Can you imagine being called a Flingebunder because some cartographer from a different galaxy thought he was somewhere else?

 

P.S. I think it would be better to change the topic name a bit so it's more obvious what discussion people are going to enter.

Edited February 23, 2017 by BillyHorrible

[euantp_]

Adding to the two above, do you really think humans would bend to the will of any other race by calling it what they want?

[Ric]

5 minutes ago, BillyHorrible said:

Yes it's silly that we named our planet after dirt and that we called one moon "Moon", but that's what we did now and changing it would be a hassle, just like changing to a better way of using days than a 7 day week with 365 days in a year (I'd go with a ten day week, a three day weekend and 36.5 weeks in a year, that .5 together with the leap years would allow for enough changing of dates) or different measurements for time (24-60-60, really? can't we just do something in base ten?).

 

Don't we call "dirt" earth, because it's part of the planet we live on instead of the other way around? The moon was named "the moon" because it was the only one that was known. It was a name before it was a noun.

 

Base 10 wasn't used in the time our calendar was "inventented". And I think it would be an equal hassle to change something that's been used for 100s of years.

 

 

OT: I think the replies above say it all. We will call this planet Earth, and the universe may call it something else.... and then you will have the intergalactic earthakus that will call the planet earth, because why not?

 

It happense all the time, take the Netherlands for example. We call it Nederland, the French call it les Pays Bas, the Finnish call it Alankomaat and the Japanese call it Oranda.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

1 minute ago, Ric said:

 

Don't we call "dirt" earth, because it's part of the planet we live on instead of the other way around? The moon was named "the moon" because it was the only one that was known. It was a name before it was a noun.

 

Base 10 wasn't used in the time our calendar was "inventented". And I think it would be an equal hassle to change something that's been used for 100s of years.

 

The dry land was called earth first and the planet was named afterwards. If you think about it, it becomes logical because early civilisations would be able to give a name to ground before realising they're on a planet.

 

Yeah I know the history, that's why I said it would be a hassle to change it now. It does seem to me that it's needlessly archaic, like still using a numbering for years to show how long it's been since the birth of a person who is of little importance to most of the population - just like forcing Christmas as two days off, what use is that for a Muslim? What good is Easter off for an Atheïst? I've lobbied for scrapping these Christian holidays for years now, voting to give people five extra days off and having employers not be able to counter a request for free days on any official religious day.

 

It's a big problem really, holding on to something while so many better options could be found, if we could just get the whole populace behind the idea (which will never happen).

 

This might be turning off-topic but I find it an interesting discussion nontheless.

[Ric]

27 minutes ago, BillyHorrible said:

 

The dry land was called earth first and the planet was named afterwards. If you think about it, it becomes logical because early civilisations would be able to give a name to ground before realising they're on a planet.

 

Yeah I know the history, that's why I said it would be a hassle to change it now. It does seem to me that it's needlessly archaic, like still using a numbering for years to show how long it's been since the birth of a person who is of little importance to most of the population - just like forcing Christmas as two days off, what use is that for a Muslim? What good is Easter off for an Atheïst? I've lobbied for scrapping these Christian holidays for years now, voting to give people five extra days off and having employers not be able to counter a request for free days on any official religious day.

 

It's a big problem really, holding on to something while so many better options could be found, if we could just get the whole populace behind the idea (which will never happen).

 

This might be turning off-topic but I find it an interesting discussion nontheless.

 

I don't think "most of the population" is right. I think the majority of people in countries where said holidays are days off are still celebrating these holidays, so it's much easier to keep these days off as the norm. Holidays have changed a lot over the years. For a lot of people it has nothing to do with religion nowadays. Christmas has Santa Claus and Easter has a bunny. Now I don't know a lot about religion, but I don't think Santa is in any of them.

 

I do believe that everyone should have the freedom to have their specific religious holidays off, but as people move to other area's of the world, they do have to realise that every country (or even region) has a certain culture and believes. You can't just expect everything to change just because a lot of people of the same believe happen to move into the same country or region.

 

But I think thats enough off-topic from me, I don't think this is the place for policial/religious discussion .

 

 

Edited February 23, 2017 by Ric

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

20 minutes ago, Ric said:

I don't think "most of the population" is right. I think the majority of people in countries where said holidays are days off are still celebrating these holidays, so it's much easier to keep these days off as the norm. Holidays have changed a lot over the years. For a lot of people it has nothing to do with religion nowadays. Christmas has Santa Claus and Easter has a bunny. Now I don't know a lot about religion, but I don't think Santa is in any of them.

 

I do believe that everyone should have the freedom to have their specific religious holidays off, but as people move to other area's of the world, they do have to realise that every country (or even region) has a certain culture and believes. You can't just expect everything to change just because a lot of people of the same believe happen to move into the same country or region.

 

But I think thats enough off-topic from me, I don't think this is the place for policial/religious discussion .

 

I just want to point out that my "most of the population" still had to do with the topic of our years being numbered after the birth of Jesus, that had nothing to do with my next topic of forced Christian holidays. And yeah Christmas (or the passing of the winter solstice, as we decided to name it in our household) is probably celebrated by many people who don't believe in or idolise Jesus, but the same can't be said about Easter or Ascension, as far as I know.

 

OT: I think that looking at the main post, if the aliens already knew about us but have let us be until we were ready to find them, then these aliens would definitely be of the kind that would let us keep the names we have decided upon for ourselves.

Edited February 23, 2017 by BillyHorrible

[RabbiAndy]

There's no right or wrong answer. It's like what's the proper word: "Friend" or "amigo"? Depends on how you're brought up.

[RedPage17]

Simple answer: Mankind is always right.

 

And, if these alien savages say otherwise..

 

[Redgrave]

"Hello Earthlings as you call yourselves now! However legally because of Space Council Law, your planet and your kind are to be called how we defined it back in your year of 10,151 B.C. known as Xul'grulpth. You must comply with this or-- wait, what is that?"

 

 

And then we were always right forever.

[damon8r351]

Scientists don't bother to give planets and stars colloquial names as they're discovered. Granted, things that can be seen with the naked eye or a simple optical telescope do have colloquial names, like Algol and Sirius, but that's only because those were named thus for hundreds or thousands of years. There's too many astronomical objects to give them all a name. So most objects are referred to by an alphanumerical code as part of a larger catalog of discovered objects. Sometimes the name of the person who created the catalog is appended to the code for clarity. For instance, the catalog created by astronomer Wilhelm Gliese, for all discovered stars within 81.54 light years of Earth, names all stars like so: "Gliese 581". The third furthest planet from the star, which is theorized to be amenable to life, is called "Gliese 581c". Humans and other intelligent life will probably have little to no way of communication. We use verbal sounds, another race may use pheromones. The only thing we might have in common is mathematics. So probably a mathematical code would be used for naming objects from an extraterrestrial perspective. Who's right? Whoever's talking.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

15 hours ago, hugglebunn-e said:

Simple answer: Mankind is always right.

 

And, if these alien savages say otherwise..

 

 

4 hours ago, Redgrave said:

"Hello Earthlings as you call yourselves now! However legally because of Space Council Law, your planet and your kind are to be called how we defined it back in your year of 10,151 B.C. known as Xul'grulpth. You must comply with this or-- wait, what is that?"

 

 

And then we were always right forever.

 

I have a feeling that you both are going to end up recreating the moment humans met other intelligent life in Mass Effect, where humans calls it the First Contact War and the turians call it the Relay 314 Incident.

[hyappatuhyakuchu]

Kill all humans.

 

#All lives don't matter

#Fuck hash tags

[Z1MZUM]

In the end we would build a wall so all contact is lost, they might come here and take our jobs otherwise.

[Oobedoob S Benubi]

5 minutes ago, Z1MZUM said:

In the end we would build a wall so all contact is lost, they might come here and take our jobs otherwise.

 

Damnit, THEUY TOOK UR JOOOBS!

 

P.S. .... and we'd make the Mexicans pay for it.

 

 

Damnit, I'm real conflicted about which reference to use.

Edited February 24, 2017 by BillyHorrible

[hyappatuhyakuchu]

53 minutes ago, BillyHorrible said:

P.S. .... and we'd make the Mexicans pay for it.

@-Dark Mark-

@Gein

[-Dark Mark-]

17 hours ago, BillyHorrible said:

 

Damnit, THEUY TOOK UR JOOOBS!

 

P.S. .... and we'd make the Mexicans pay for it.

 

 

Damnit, I'm real conflicted about which reference to use.

 

16 hours ago, Hyakulegger said:

@-Dark Mark-

@Gein

 

Shit good luck, I can barely pay for my tacos and yard cleaning equipment.