2009-12-02

We Need a Starship Named For Him

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll bet you there's at least one USS Alhazen kicking around in a non-canon work somewhere, particularly given all the weird, unpronounceable names the video game companies that made Star Trek games were fond of using...

Anonymous said...

I don't think he's talking about a USS Alhazen. He's talking about a...

USS Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham

You'd have to have at least a Galaxy class ship to wrap that thing around the saucer.

Anonymous said...

Regarding the 'length' of USS Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham it's worth noting that more than half of that is describing his descent (ibn means 'son of'). Few starships in canon gave been named after peoples' full names and even when they are, there are limits. You see the USS Thomas Paine on the hull not the USS Thomas Paine son of Joseph Paine son of Frances Paine and abbreviating full names is much more common e.g. USS Hood, not the USS Sir Samuel Hood (with or without his title of 1st Viscount Hood being thrown in). Moreover, it seems pretty clear that the names of canon starships are often anglicized e.g. USS Cairo as opposed to USS al-Qāhira

Hence a USS Alhazen or USS Al-Hasan or even USS Abu Ali al-Hasan doesn't seem to be either unreasonable or requiring all that much more lettering than USS John F. Kennedy (orders for which were displayed on-screen in 'Conspiracy')...

Hailene said...

And all the fun in the post just went WHOOOSH as it flew by.

Anonymous said...

Just curious, wasn't that the name of Janeways ship when she served as science officer?

Anonymous said...

No, that was the Al-Batanti, which is named after a different Muslim scientist guy to the one Anderson linked to...

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Al-Batani

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Batani