My favorite silly thing about Sci Fi is when Earth gets a different name for no reason. “Urth” feels like a natural phonological change, but “Old Terra” is like if United States English started arbitrarily referring to England as “Ol’ Anglia.” There has to have been a break in cultural/language continuity or some top-down classification system thing
@MaryJackalope Why is this strange? Almost no one calls Sri Lanka "Ceylon" anymore. Rhodesia and Zaire will be forgotten by the time of my children's children.
“Ceylon” is what the English called it, after a series of transliterations (basically a game of telephone). Then it was officially called Sri Lanka when the country adopted a new constitution, after it had gained independence. So that demonstrates cultural exchanges and all kinds of languages crossing paths and endonyms and exonyms and colonization and independence. I’d expect if English speakers went to Mars they’d refer to Earth as “Earth,” then on from there for as long as English sounded the same, unless there were some governing body that made a decision to change the nomenclature at some point
@arjie @MaryJackalope Rhodesia will live on in the heart and soul of all those with the spirit of adventure
@arjie @MaryJackalope Yeah some of us would like for it to be called Ceylon but got to live with Sri Lanka unfortunately 🥲🤷🏻♂️