You gave us a Latin name?

[qcontinuum]

The arrogance of humanity is absolutely stunning. They're still running around naming every species they run into-- including the plant and animal and nanite and energy and silicon and every other form of life-- with a dead language from their long-past history.

Of course generally speaking they seem to be giving species names based on their own words for themselves. I can only imagine what they named the Klingons. Klingonus semisapiens? (Okay, that's not what they named them, but they should have.)

So I decided to see what they named us. "Deolus ludens" : playing little gods.

Little gods?

Who play?

I said something to Riker one time about the sentience of species being defined by the complexity of their games. So I suppose Riker's behind this. Either that or the line made it into a report and someone else thought it would be funny to name us for it.

The Organians are "Deolus pacans" -- little gods who make peace. Yeah, right. How humanicentric.

But on the other hand I think I'd rather be well known for the quality of my games than something boring like making peace. :-)

Who got the idea of putting us all in the same taxonomic genus anyway? We're not actually related. Not to the Organians, anyway. We're distantly related to the Douwd but in the same sense that all human mammals are related.

But little gods? I'm omnipotent. How would you go about defining a big god?

Okay, so I will put up with "petit dieu", but deolus sounds like something Crusher would treat with a hypospray. And that's why Latin is a dead language and French isn't. Latin, to put it bluntly, sucks. (What kind of language takes the concept "beauty" and makes it into the word "pulchritudina?")

Comments

Re: It's not just Humans

[kathrynjaneway.livejournal.com]

For instance, "humanity" or "humans" is our name for you. "Primitive, savage child-race" is one possible description we might apply to you. See the difference?

Just glad to hear that they are not interchangable *g*.

that's gotten as old as can I make a rock so heavy I can't lift it.

Well, can you? (Sorry, I couldn't resist. But seriously, this strikes me as a rather ridiculous question to pose to a god-like being, if one could ask *anything* at all).

I don't know how many times I need to make it clear that the Q have no concept of monogamy...

I wasn't referring to a monogamous relationship, Q. At least how humans would define the term. I'm well aware of your views on the subject. Rather, I meant you appeared lately to be focusing most of your *attention* on one particular individual...who, coincidentally, just had a birthday and speaks French (which you have stated you much prefer as a language over Latin).

Therefore we're more omnipotent than she is

Perhaps my human limitations are showing, but I keep returning to the fact that 'omni' means 'all', so 'omnipotent' is 'all-powerful.' One doesn't usually think of there being different degrees of all-powerful, it's more of an absolute.

The tattoo, of course. It looked stupid. What, did you think I was talking about something else? :-)

It never crossed my mind for even an instant that you might have done away with another 'accessory'(it would certainly belie another definition of the word omipotent...) Though, your physical form is one you've simply adopted for your interactions with Humans, so really there is nothing to prevent you from making any 'alterations' you wish.

Any removals are reversible, yes?