Things that make me go huh?

[gwyn]

Why do people always lowercase the h in human, but uppercase the C in Cylon? I would like to start a campaign to stamp out the indiscriminate title-casing of selective species. When I realized this discrepancy, I started lowercasing the c, but people like to gently "correct" me in posts. Cylon is neither a product/brand name nor an organization (Firefly-class ship, Nexus 6 replicant, the Alliance, the Mounties, Browncoats), nor a nationality/continental/planetary identity (Canadian, African, Bajoran, Betelgeusian, Vulcan), nor a religious identification (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) though admittedly, it could become that eventually. It's a classification no different than human in the series, yet across fandom, people treat it as more significant by uppercasing the c.

Comments

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

You know, human race. But yeah, it's a species... so why isn't cylon a species, too? Or, if species are capped, then why not human? As descriptors go, this doesn't make sense to me. I've been thinking about this for a long time. Also, we don't have a good name for ourselves in English -- Earthlings is as good as it gets.

[sherrold.livejournal.com]

What about Terrans? -- way cooler than Earthlings, and always capitalized, too.

My theory is "human" is just a bad translation. They are using a noun that means "member of our society, who is not a Cylon" and it is being mistranlated, probably by those silly proles on SciFi channel, as "human".

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I had a feeling someone would bring that one up! I don't think it plays, though, because have you ever heard anyone outside SF circles say it? I could be wrong. We don't have a sensible name for ourselves.

I'm willing to go with the mistranslation, though.