Nitpick: it's absolutely correct to capitalise Mandalorian as it's a territory/culture with a proper noun.

Aren't humans commonly referred to as Earthlings? I do respect the point you are making, especially with reference to the Star Trek species.

Read the post again. Why do we conceptualise these aliens as a culture, rather than a species? Why did we name them after their planet?

Read the post again, they don't know Mandalorian is a culture and not a species, they list them among species , before talking about culture. Nitpick posts have to have their facts straight, lest they be nitpicked themselves.

Foreign cultures get capitalized names, animals do not.

Those people are Klingons, their species is klingon. They come from Qo’nos.

I see. I did not know

We're Terrans from Terra.

That's because all sci-fi alien species are monocultures (Mass Effect included though).

I thought we were Humans from Hume.

The universal translator is doing its best not to call everyone Us from the planet Home.

Or Dirt.

Not Kantians from Kant?

checks definition of a proper noun

A proper noun is a specific (i.e., not generic) name for a particular person, place, or thing.

😯 Tumblr user is right!

I think it's pretty obvious that humanity is a culture, and it's not a very good one. I'm otherkin; I don't identify as human. I wouldn't want to be a human, because humanity as a construct is used to justify so much evil. When people wanted to do the slave trade or the holocaust or colonisation, they did it by stripping humanity from these groups. Because human culture says it's acceptable to treat nonhumans this way. And that's why I want nothing to do with such a toxic construct. I'm not interested in appealing to colonial values.

Some people also claim they're just platonic. I don't know if Plato is a planet, though.

Did you hear about Plato? That's messed up, right?

What about in German?

All nouns are capitalised in German, so you don't have this weird dichotomy in the first place...

It's gonna be at least 20 years before another studio attempts a choice-based narrative trilogy with save imports and it's probably going to suck.

In real life they would probably be named after the solar system or general galactic region rather than home planet too, so hell yeah!

If history truly rhymes, the aliens are going to be named "hello" or whatever the humans hear them saying often, unless the aliens can visibly destroy us in a fight.

If only it had no stupid third party launcher, I’d love to play Mass Effect again. Great series.

I do have it on 360, I could always play on that I suppose.

I don't get the confusion. It's just a sign of respect, an acknowledgement that these other alien species are truly our equals. Or at the very least, equal enough that it would be disrespectful to refer to them the same way we do animals.

My head canon is that the shows simply show the aliens from a human perspective. A Klingon would laugh if you told them Klingons are a monoculture. In fact, they would probably pull out a knife and threaten to slit your throat:

DO ALL KLINGONS LOOK ALIKE TO YOU??

Star Trek governing bodies tend to include the founding species in their name so citizens of "The Klingon Empire" can be called "Klingons" regardless of whether or not they're actually of the klingon species. The same doesn't apply to any species like humans who are citizens of The Federation, unless you're talking about the Mirror-universe Terrans who are citizens of The Terran Empire.

these got dam helloans stealing our jobs

Probably taken from some latin language to sound cooler (eg: italians) where the Earth is called Terra

Are we not supposed to be capitalizing species names? I just don't do it because I'm lazy.

Yeah I thought they were considered proper nouns and therefore are capitalized by default?

From Humus.

They're usually named for their home world as well. Klingons are the exception in that their home world used to be Kling, and was then renamed later.

It's basically the equivalent of Earthlings.

That seems like it would only work if you've the one species. Multiple species would be confusing.

Humans and martians would both be solarians, for example.

They also usually have one place of origin, or if there are multiple, it's just vaguely in a direction (lots of planets have a north), or an off-world colony, so the whole species is named for the planet they came from.

Martians are from Mars, Vulcans are from Vulcan, Humans are from Hume, etc. You don't tend to have them mention any more specific regions than that. Where on Earth do Earthlings come from? Why, the Earthling city, of course.

I don't understand, do you capitalise duck and cow and eagle? Those aren't proper nouns

No because those are general names for a type of animal. I wouldn't capitalize dog or cat but I'd capitalize German Shepard or Maine Coon.

Well, you said species. German Shepherd isn't a species. The species is dog (canis familiaris).

That's a fair point. I suppose in my mind I just saw things like dog cat duck lion bear as derivatives. General terms to name a specific group of animals or species. Calling them by their actual scientific names feels more like a proper noun to me.

I wouldn't capitalize brown bear but I'd capitalize Grizzly or Kodiak.

English is dumb anyway so it's whatever at this point

Well, I think that's kinda the point of the OOP. Species aren't supposed to be anything special. By capitalising the names of alien species we're elevating them to be synonymous with culture, even though it's impossible for any species to have a monoculture. We're monolithising a (fictional alien) species.

By the way, Grizzly bear and Kodiak bear aren't species either. They're both brown bears (ursos arctos).

Well I don't think that's inherent to humanity or humanism. I agree though that humanity isn't a value in of itself, because if we accept that it is, stripping someone of that humanity is enough to denigrate and mistreat them. I also see the colonialist baggage that humanist philosophy continues to carry to this day. If we'd ever manage to establish contact with nonhumans, I'd definitely be on the lookout for anyone who suddenly starts talking about progressivism and "humanist values".

Annyong

Good news! We already made contact with intelligent nonhuman life. I'm one of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin

I'd say the system would usually be named after the culture/species too. It's not like our solar system even has a proper name, we kind of decided that sun is just a generic name for stars.

Well fuck me. I'm dumber than I thought.

I would bet that as soon as we found another intelligent species, we would start capitalizing Humans.

Are we Earthlings or earthlings?

Right, if we're talking about humans who are French... One gets capitalized the other does not. "French" is a proper noun "human" is not.

But this is an English rule. If we were writing in French we would not capitalize the reference to the people of a specific nation.

Thank you Mass Effect for properly categorising aliens as just another species of animal. Now, let me romance that dog real quick.

We will 100% capitalise the names of alien races as if they were Romans etc. if only because that is what most sci-fi has done for decades now. Life imitates art in some cases.

"Greetings, Earthlings." 👽

Canis lupus familiaris, actually. Domestic dogs and grey wolves are the same species (canis lupus), but dogs are a distinct subspecies (familiaris).

Is "Klingon" a species or is it the name of a racial or ethnic group? You don't capitalize the name of a species, but you do capitalize the name of racial and ethnic groups, like African Americans.

Because of that, maybe it would be proper to say "We're at war with the Klingons." But, also "I'm not an expert on klingon biology."

This gets confusing because in Sci Fi, the common idea is that humanity has reached a point where there are galactic empires. Because of that, a single planet rarely has more than one racial or ethnic group on it. Everybody from the planet Vulcan is part of one Vulcan racial, ethnic and cultural group. In fact, it's pretty rare for there to be a warp-capable species who doesn't have some unified government.

So, in most Sci Fi, the name of the planet is the name of the species, and also the name of the single racial and ethnic group that species belongs to. In the 21st century, "humans" is a species, because there's no distinct racial or ethnic group that represents all of humanity. But, in the 31st century (assuming humans survive that long) maybe it will be Humans because we'll all consider ourselves to be one unified group, and it will be useful to distinguish us from Siriusans, Procyonians, etc.

I think in the context of Star Trek, Klingons are a racial or ethnic group. They're part of a galactic empire

We're just Earthlings, worms are Earthlings and earthlings.