3 ms·

Well this is just delightful. I get why they’re trying to replicate two-letter codes, but IMO three-letter ones scan so much better, giving you, what, 26 times

by bbor 2y ago

Well this is just delightful. I get why they’re trying to replicate two-letter codes, but IMO three-letter ones scan so much better, giving you, what, 26 times more options? For one thing, interplanetary caravans / stations can just use the name of the body they are orbiting — .sol! Definitely better than .sun, IMO. From there, we could dodge all these concerns by making planets subdomains like .ca.gov (presumably a common thing?). This would have the appeal of robustly setting us up for galactic expansion, at least for the first 26^3 settled systems! You can never be too prepared… Otherwise the mixing of name origins is a little jarring IMO, and the planets are already in a dead language, Latin. Why not keep em, if we have three letters and/or a super domain? For three letters, I’d propose; .mrc, .vns, .ter, .mrs, .jpt, .stn, .npt, .uns, and then .sol for the bits and bobs at the edges. Some of the naive three letter choices work great (.jup, .sat, .nep) but some are just ugly IMO (.mar, .mer, .ura), so some creativity might be called for. Part of me really wants to say the big habitable moons deserve their own, but if we give it to them, then .jup and .sat would go basically unused ;( I hope we get longevity tech in my lifetime so I can live to see this become a fight among interplanetary sys admins! If nothing else, .terra might be a cute climate change domain for right now…

shiroiushi 2y ago
>For one thing, interplanetary caravans / stations can just use the name of the body they are orbiting — .sol! Definitely better than .sun, IMO. I wish we'd stop using "Moon" as the name of Earth's moon, since "moon" is not a proper noun anyway and there's hundreds of moons in our system. "Luna" is a much better name. >For three letters, I’d propose; .mrc, .vns, .ter, .mrs, .jpt, .stn, .npt, .uns, and then .sol for the bits and bobs at the edges No, I think planets should be sub-domains for .sol. Everything should end in .sol, unless it's of extrasolar origin. Then it'll be easy to have domain names for other star systems. Also, your 3-letter proposals aren't good. How about: .mer.sol, .ven.sol, .ter.sol, .mar.sol (or .mcr.sol later), .jup.sol, .sat.sol, .nep.sol, .ura.sol, and also things like .cer.sol, .mak.sol, and .plu.sol.
- calgoo 2y ago
  >I wish we'd stop using "Moon" as the name of Earth's moon, since "moon" is not a proper noun anyway and there's hundreds of moons in our system. "Luna" is a much better name. I mean sure I agree, but Luna means moon in Spanish / Latin so its not really that much better (just like Sol just means Sun in Spanish :) ). I get that we named them according to the Latin names, but they are still not that "unique" if you consider other languages apart from English.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >I mean sure I agree, but Luna means moon in Spanish / Latin Sorry, what I really mean is that I think we should call the moon "Luna" in English (so we don't confuse it with other moons). In Spanish, they might want to call it "Moon" instead, for the same reason. Edit: in addition, with my proposal, our moon's domain will be .lun.ter.sol, rather than .moo.ter.sol which would make people think of cows.
adrian_b 2y ago
Nit pick: I do not like the abbreviation "mrs" for Mars, from an etymological point of view. The root of the name of the Roman god is Mart-. The "-s" is not a part of the name. It is the marker of the nominative case, like in "John's" the "'s" is the marker of the genitive case. "Mart-" was a stem ending in a consonant, so the case marker was attached directly to the stem, without a thematic vowel like in the most frequent Latin words. So the nominative of "Mart-" was "Marts". The Latins found difficult to pronounce "-ts", so in all such words "-ts" has been simplified to "-s", resulting in "Mars". English has the habit to borrow Latin words in their nominative-case form, because this was their traditional dictionary form. I consider this habit as bad, but this would be a longer discussion, so English has settled for the form "Mars". In Latin, in most other noun cases or in the derived words the complete name "Mart" was present, for instance in the adjective "martial", which has also been borrowed in English, or in the genitive form "Martius", which has become English "March" (and "Martius" is actually the name of the planet in Latin, because the planet Mars was not the god Mars, but the planet of the god Mars). In conclusion, I consider that the correct abbreviation for the planet Mars is "mrt", not "mrs", which has a spurious "s". There are other languages than English, e.g. many Romance languages, where the name of the planet is derived from "Mart", not from "Mars". In the Romance languages, the nouns inherited from Latin are normally derived from their accusative-case form, not from the nominative-case form. Only for nouns that have not been inherited, but which have been reintroduced by scholars, it is common to use a form derived from the nominative case of the dictionaries. In Latin, the complete name of the planet Mars was "stella Martius", the star of Mars. In ancient Latin or Greek, "planet" was not used as a noun, but as an adjective for "stella" or "aster" (star), to distinguish the wandering stars from the normal fixed stars.

by bbor 2y ago

shiroiushi 2y ago

>For one thing, interplanetary caravans / stations can just use the name of the body they are orbiting — .sol! Definitely better than .sun, IMO. I wish we'd stop using "Moon" as the name of Earth's moon, since "moon" is not a proper noun anyway and there's hundreds of moons in our system. "Luna" is a much better name. >For three letters, I’d propose; .mrc, .vns, .ter, .mrs, .jpt, .stn, .npt, .uns, and then .sol for the bits and bobs at the edges No, I think planets should be sub-domains for .sol. Everything should end in .sol, unless it's of extrasolar origin. Then it'll be easy to have domain names for other star systems. Also, your 3-letter proposals aren't good. How about: .mer.sol, .ven.sol, .ter.sol, .mar.sol (or .mcr.sol later), .jup.sol, .sat.sol, .nep.sol, .ura.sol, and also things like .cer.sol, .mak.sol, and .plu.sol.

calgoo 2y ago
>I wish we'd stop using "Moon" as the name of Earth's moon, since "moon" is not a proper noun anyway and there's hundreds of moons in our system. "Luna" is a much better name. I mean sure I agree, but Luna means moon in Spanish / Latin so its not really that much better (just like Sol just means Sun in Spanish :) ). I get that we named them according to the Latin names, but they are still not that "unique" if you consider other languages apart from English.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >I mean sure I agree, but Luna means moon in Spanish / Latin Sorry, what I really mean is that I think we should call the moon "Luna" in English (so we don't confuse it with other moons). In Spanish, they might want to call it "Moon" instead, for the same reason. Edit: in addition, with my proposal, our moon's domain will be .lun.ter.sol, rather than .moo.ter.sol which would make people think of cows.

adrian_b 2y ago

Nit pick: I do not like the abbreviation "mrs" for Mars, from an etymological point of view. The root of the name of the Roman god is Mart-. The "-s" is not a part of the name. It is the marker of the nominative case, like in "John's" the "'s" is the marker of the genitive case. "Mart-" was a stem ending in a consonant, so the case marker was attached directly to the stem, without a thematic vowel like in the most frequent Latin words. So the nominative of "Mart-" was "Marts". The Latins found difficult to pronounce "-ts", so in all such words "-ts" has been simplified to "-s", resulting in "Mars". English has the habit to borrow Latin words in their nominative-case form, because this was their traditional dictionary form. I consider this habit as bad, but this would be a longer discussion, so English has settled for the form "Mars". In Latin, in most other noun cases or in the derived words the complete name "Mart" was present, for instance in the adjective "martial", which has also been borrowed in English, or in the genitive form "Martius", which has become English "March" (and "Martius" is actually the name of the planet in Latin, because the planet Mars was not the god Mars, but the planet of the god Mars). In conclusion, I consider that the correct abbreviation for the planet Mars is "mrt", not "mrs", which has a spurious "s". There are other languages than English, e.g. many Romance languages, where the name of the planet is derived from "Mart", not from "Mars". In the Romance languages, the nouns inherited from Latin are normally derived from their accusative-case form, not from the nominative-case form. Only for nouns that have not been inherited, but which have been reintroduced by scholars, it is common to use a form derived from the nominative case of the dictionaries. In Latin, the complete name of the planet Mars was "stella Martius", the star of Mars. In ancient Latin or Greek, "planet" was not used as a noun, but as an adjective for "stella" or "aster" (star), to distinguish the wandering stars from the normal fixed stars.