OpenGeofiction
Hello everyone.
I was just thinking about the history of the OGF planet. (We really do need a name for it!) It occurred to me that it could be quite interesting to expand the OGF universe a bit. It would be very interesting to do a geological history of the planet, and have a series of maps illustrating the positions of the continents throughout time.
I was also wondering how far the OGF universe extends. Are the real-life planets still with us, with the OGF world replacing Earth, or is the OGF universe completely different to our current one, and if so, how much different?
Discussion
Comment from Rasmus Rasmusson on 26 December 2015 at 19:41
I’m not sure if we would need one general name for the planet. Our earth doesn’t have one name either; unless you count ‘earth’, which is however different in all our languages. Something like ‘Vulcan’ or ‘Cardassia’ in Star Trek sounds like one culture (from the outside) has named it, and I would not really like that for this planet
I would however favour names of other planets; after all, there are streets that need to be named :)
Comment from Leowezy on 26 December 2015 at 20:53
I think for the sake of realism, we should assume that the whole universe is exactly the same as is in the real world; with the sole exception of “earth’s” geology and culture. Otherwise we end up with the task of literally creating a whole new universe, without actually “adding” anything to it; what benefits would it have for the worldbuilding in OGF if we were to change “earth’s” position in the solar system, or the “sun’s” mass for example? If there are mappers who’d like to have a particular “new” star constellation for example, I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem since it wouldn’t interfer with other members’ work; but reenvisioning the entire universe seems a bit too ambitioned for my taste ;)
Comment from Rasmus Rasmusson on 26 December 2015 at 21:23
That could work; so then we would have to name seven planets and one dubious half-planet, as well as copious amounts of moons for several planets (or let everyone decide for him/herself if the original names are copied or not).
Comment from Ernestpkirby on 28 December 2015 at 00:59
I have heard ideas for parody names that were close, like Mers/Mahs, Venis, etc. I personally think Sunaru (Uranus backward) sounds like a good replacement name for Saturn, but it would require the input from everyone- Id prefer names similar to the originals but not TOO similar, though they’d basically be the same planets.
Such as Sunaru for Saturn Veena for Venus Jupino for Jupiter etc
These are not particularly ideas per say (other than Sunaru) but I thought something along those lines would work.
Comment from clik on 28 December 2015 at 12:47
I think the planets names come from the names of roman gods in the real universe. Maybe we should consider giving to OGF planets the names of gods from an ancient OGF civilization (roman equivalent or another).
Comment from Yuanls on 28 December 2015 at 16:26
Is there an ancient Roman or Greek equivalent in OGF? And do we necessarily need different names?
Comment from clik on 28 December 2015 at 18:21
What would be roman equivalent (in language origins) : http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Romantian
I’m currently starting to write about ancient hellanisian/eganian civilization and mythology, an equivalent of ancient greece.
I think the names should be different from real world, because if the backgroung and origins are not the same, then there is not anything coherent.
Comment from BMSOUZA on 28 December 2015 at 19:56
I think is not necessarily creating names to other planets…
In my mind, OGF-planet is in the opposite place of Earth, based in the Sun. This way, to me and my countries, there are not so much problem about naming other planets in our languages (Mercúrio, Vênus, Terra/Térria to OGF Planet, Marte, Júpiter, Saturno, Urano, Netuno and even Plutão)
If we decide about naming other planets, we need before creating some mithology (and if more than one country wishes to be “the Greek” or “the Roman” ones??? Another problem…)
Well, you all decides, hehe!
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 29 December 2015 at 02:49
Relating real world features and OGF features is always difficult. In OGF world, we use real-world languages, alphabets and mapping software. We have to accept this because there is no alternative; we would be unable to create an alternative fictional world without them. So maybe some of us explain this by saying that the history of the OGF world has led us to a point where similar languages, cultures, religions and even names exist in both worlds. This is even though the distribution of continents in the OGF world is different. We fit our OGF reality around these constraints.
The names of the planets in OGF aren’t really a constraint. They have and have had very little effect on human history, as far as I can tell. It doesn’t matter too much what their names are, or were. The locations, size and composition of planets – and moons – is different, and does restrict us. These things may well have affected the development of life on our planet. So it would probably make things more difficult, perhaps less believable, if they were different - at least regarding the major planets (though we perhaps some comets and asteroids might also be important).
So I think I agree with Leowezy that the universe should be similar, but perhaps not identical. We are talking about a fictional planet, with fictional continents. We have already had some asteroid strikes that don’t seem to correspond with those on earth. If the OGF world was in the same place in space as the rw earth, then these couldn’t have happened the way they have been described. So it looks like some ‘off planet’ things must be different. Perhaps, regarding the ‘rest of the universe’ ‘keep it similar, but not the same’ applies.
Going back to the names, if sticking with similar names to our own for planets it might be easier just to make the history fit the name. So, for example, ‘Mars’ could have been a Sathrian sphinx-god,and the name totally unrelated to Latin (or Romantian) language. But maybe a new name would serve better. In any case, I don’t see a need for them all to stem from one culture. There doesn’t seem any good reason - at least in current OGF history - for that.
Comment from isleño on 30 December 2015 at 09:45
Personally, I love the ambiguity of not knowing whether OGF is an alternative planet located in Earth’s place, or some other planet that exists elsewhere, or… who knows, something else.
I don’t want OGF to come across as an “other planet” (which is why I don’t think the OGF world should have any specific name at all, or be surrounded by alien planets), but I also don’t want it to appear to be a copy of Earth (with exact equivalents of the planets in our own solar system).
So ideally… I’d prefer that the details of the solar system be left completely unknown.