< Finances | Skills | History >

Geography

How Systems are Named

Each System has two names, one being the name that appears on the official charts, the name that most of the people that live within that system call it or the name it was given by the survey team that passed through it. Then, a System develops another unofficial name used by any Spacers that pass through. These names have a few different origins.

First, some worlds receive names more or less at random because of some feature that captures their attention. Examples include Dwarfholme, Xeno, Smokey, or Hole, all of which describe features of interest to a Spacer. The system might be named after an interesting inhabitant, as in the case of Dwarfholme, or a noteworthy stellar feature, such as with Hole. Others are named for historical interest, like Xeno, or noteworthy conditions, like Smokey. These types of system names are the most common among Spacers.

Second, some system are named after the most interesting world in that system, such as Garden or Market, both names of important worlds that are used to describe entire star systems. This is sometimes confused with the first type of name, as often the name of the "world" is also a Spacer Nickname. Still, the classes are distinct and often the use of this kind of name for a system denotes a certain amount of prestige on the world in question. Systems aren't named after un-interesting worlds, after all!

Lastly, some systems are named after their Star, and often times this matches the 'official' name of the System. Due to this, these types of nicknames are often unpopular, with two exceptions. One is in cases like Sirius or Sol, where the System itself is being paid homage by its nickname. The other case is more rare, and applies with systems like Tartarus, where the Spacer nickname for the System caught on and replaced its official name in common usage.