Nyota means ‘star’ in Swahili.
Also, only somewhat related, supposedly, Roddenberry had a friend in WWII named Kim Noonien Singh who he lost touch with and named Khan after him in tribute. The weird thing is that the friend was supposed to be Chinese and none of that name sounds Chinese.
I’m probably far from the first person to make this connection, but Noonien seems like a pretty obvious phonetic misspelling of Nguyen to me. I last watched TOS and a lot of material related to Khan as a kid and I don’t know too much about Roddenberry as a person, but given his other stances I think it’s not impossible that this is his “hidden” commentary on the Vietnam war. And even putting all of that aside for a moment; his “friend” (if he really existed) might’ve been ethnically Chinese, but born in a different Southeast Asian country and the native language there then adapted his Chinese name to fit their phonology. But I don’t know, I’m not a professional linguist, I might be way off here… (Ah I just saw Deceptichum had pretty much the same thought as me but was faster in writing them down ^^')
Me being the Discovery fan I am, I started to run through name meanings of the crew and hit something that doesn’t fit for Discovery but does for TNG.
Hugh.
Apparently one of the meanings of the name is “soul”. Given Hugh was the name ‘chosen’ by the drone in I Borg, I think that’s pretty fuckin neat!
One of the biggest Star Trek names that blew my mind when I first read about it was …
Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets, Astromycologist and Engineer
Named after the real life Paul Edward Stamets, an American mycologist and pioneer in mycology research and science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Stamets
I know most Trek fans already know all this information but when you’ve been out of the loop with Trek culture and general culture in real life … it was very surprising for me when I first realized the connection between the real world personality and the on screen Star Trek character. And they did a great job of representing the name and associating them to the work that they do.
And like the real life Stamets and the on screen Stamets, our TenForward Stamets has a habit of working their tendrils of connection deep into this community and making it stronger.
