What would inorganic species call themselves? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by T156@lemmy.world to c/worldbuilding@lemmy.world

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I've been using "mechanoid" as a classification (similar to humanoid, etc), but a friend pointed out that it's both too generic, and that said inorganics might just consider it biology, with organics being the weird outlier.

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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I l've always imagined that a silicon based life-form (one of the few realistically proposed possibilities of inorganic life I know of) just sounds like a crystal chandelier during an earthquake.

Linguistically, whatever they name themselves in their own language would just translate to whatever we call them in our languages because that's usually what we do. I think this would be especially true if the alien language is physically impossible to vocalize as a human.

[-] T156@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Linguistically, whatever they name themselves in their own language would just translate to whatever we call them in our languages because that’s usually what we do. I think this would be especially true if the alien language is physically impossible to vocalize as a human.

Fair point. I was rather thinking about it from more of a human categorisation point of view. If they're not all mechanical, or weren't constructed, I can definitely see some limits with using "mechanoid" as a descriptor.

Like how you could categorise a lot of mammals as organoid, but it lacks the nuances compared to having other words like mammalian or humanoid.