Centuries from now, after a period of conflict that threatened to cast the Earth back into
barbarism, mankind finally set aside its differences and united under the authority of a single
world government. After expanding into space and colonizing dozens of star systems across the galaxy, Earth now
now presides as the capital of the.. well take your pick. The Terran Federation?
United Earth Directorate? United Nations of Earth? You have plenty of names to choose from.
But does it even matter what its called? …Well, yes. Yes it does.
When it comes to naming a country, there are no formal guidelines or rules you need to
follow. But in science fiction, words like Republic, Empire, Federation, and others are often used interchangeably
without regard for their inferred meaning. In other cases, attempting to differentiate
various countries either within the same universe or against other popular science fiction settings,
nations will be given names that are overly convoluted or just make no sense.
In this episode of Incoming, we’re going to look at the some of the most popular choices
for naming an interstellar civilization and include some examples of what works and what doesn't.
But before we begin, I’d like to make a few things clear. The first is, that for the most
part, I’ll be focusing on human nations that originate on Earth. The reason for this
is that alien societies aren’t bound by any human definitions or concepts and without
that you can rationalize basically any name or style of government you like.
The second thing is that, as I mentioned before, there are no set rules on how to name a country
and the definitions of specific terms can be nebulous at best. This video is mostly
just my own opinions on what is most logical and believable and shouldn’t be viewed as
a masterclass on political science.
Now, a nation’s name is almost always influenced by its style of government
so that's where we're going to start, beginning with Republics.
In the modern era, Republics are the most common form of government and the word
“republic” is used in the official name of three quarters of the world’s nations.
Part of this is because the term has a very broad meaning; its origins lie in describing
any state without a monarchy and no hereditary aristocracy. Generally a Republic implies
some form of democracy or control of the government by the people, but that’s not always true,
and in some cases a nation might claim to be a Republic purely for show rather than
for the actual ability of its citizens to choose their own leaders.
Basically, the only firm rule is that if your country is not governed by a monarch, you can
name it a Republic. Which is why I have a problem with the Centauri Republic.
The term "Republic" is so imprecise can and represent almost any style of government that its hard
to defend its use in the one nation in Babylon 5 ruled by an emperor.
Now I get the feeling that a lot of writers find the term "Republic" kinda boring and they want
to add something onto it. That’s not unreasonable, plenty of nations in our own world have done the same thing.
You can have a Socialist or People’s Republic if your nation is communist, although capitalist
examples also exist.
There are Islamic Republics which are a sort of compromise between a purely Islamic caliphate
and a more secular republic.
There’s also Federal Republics which exist as a federation of states under a republican
form of government.
But if you’d like to make it very clear that your nation is governed by the people,
regardless of whether or not that’s actually the case, you might use the term
Democratic Republic or even Democratic People’s Republic if you wanna go all out.
While those are just the major examples, plenty more styles of Republic exist. Parliamentary,
Unitary, Constitutional, the list goes on. In most cases though, these would be used
in academic circles to describe a style of Republic rather than being included within
the official name. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but my guess is that most nations
have decided that their parliament or constitution doesn’t need special inclusion in the name
of the country, or in the case of a Unitary Republic, it’s just kind of redundant.
So that leads me to the Martian Congressional Republic. From the name alone, it seems like
the Martian government follows the parliamentary system whereby the executive branch is accountable
to the legislature, which in this case would be the Martian Congress. While this style
of government makes sense to me, I’m not sure the name does. What is so important about
the Martian Congress that they need to be immortalized in the official name of the country?
I’m going to let this one go, though because the Expanse takes place far enough in the
future to allow for some sort of political or societal shift. Off the record though,
I’m pretty sure the authors just thought they needed to spice up the word Republic
a bit and threw in Congressional because it sounded kinda futuristic.
I haven’t finished all the books though,
so if this is perfectly explained somewhere please leave an angry comment below.
So that about covers Republics but the final point I need to make is just because a country
fits the definition of a Republic, it doesn’t need to have Republic in its name.
Which brings us to Commonwealths.
Commonwealths are easy because its meaning is even more nebulous than Republic.
In the purest sense, a Commonwealth is anything founded for the common good, or Common-Wealth.
This describes pretty much every nation in history.
Perhaps it's because the term is so generic or because
it’s now so closely linked with the British Commonwealth, only a few modern nations include
Commonwealth in their formal name. It still seems a perfectly reasonable name to
use though, so I have nothing against the Systems Commonwealth from Andromeda.
Well, actually, I do, but not with the Commonwealth part and we'll cover that later.
So next we have Federations, also known as Federal States or as previously mentioned,
Federal Republics. These are a union of partially self-governing territories which have been granted
some level of authority by a federal government. The United Federation of Planets is a perfect
example of this. All member worlds are represented on the Federation Council and have some level
of autonomy but are ultimately subject to the power of the Federation President
on certain issues.
A terrible example would be the Trade Federation, which makes no sense whatsoever.
Why a corporate conglomerate would call itself a Trade Federation is beyond me,
especially when it’s leader is a Viceroy, which implies some sort of Monarchy. Maybe
things work differently in the Star Wars universe but in ours this makes no sense.
From Federations we move on to Confederations. As you might expect, Confederations and Federations
are pretty similar, but the distinction is generally that a Confederation is a union
of sovereign states brought together for a specific purpose, typically an external threat.
Unlike most Federations, membership within a Confederation is voluntary, and states within
it can relinquish their membership. This means that the federal authority of a Confederacy
is comparatively weak. As with all these terms however, the exact nature of a Confederacy
can vary from a loose association of states to those with a strong central government resembling
a federal system. I’ll give the Confederacy of Independent Systems some credit here, their
name perfectly fits their style of government and opposition to the Galactic Republic.
I should also make a quick mention of the term League, which can be used interchangeably
with Confederation although it's likely even more decentralized. If your nation is supposed
to have a tyrannical central government, maybe don’t call it a League.
So that brings us to maybe the most popular and overused term in fiction. Empires.
An empire is generally defined as a collection of nations or people brought together through
force or the threat of force and ruled over by an Emperor or some type of powerful sovereign.
My problem with Empires in science fiction is that this style of government is ineffective
and outdated, and it seems highly unlikely that any state ruled in this manner could
survive for long enough to develop interstellar travel before falling apart to internal unrest.
If this empire is ruled by a hereditary monarch the situation is even worse because there
is absolutely nothing to prevent inadequate leadership on every level. It can be interesting
to see medieval style feudalism brought into a science fiction setting, but if you’re
going for even the semblance of realism, any government functioning in this manner would
be almost thoroughly incompetent. A nation run on a merit-based system in which individuals
can obtain power regardless of their birthright will always be better organized and likely
more advanced, culturally, scientifically, economically and militarily than an Empire
which rewards those being born into the right family. As an added bonus unique to Empires, whenever the sovereign dies
without an appointed heir, the Empire gets thrown into crisis. There is a reason why
almost no monarchies survived the 20th century without becoming largely ceremonial.
Unless Earth underwent some sort of terrible apocalypse and society had to be completely rebuilt,
a futuristic human government should never be referred to officially as an Empire.
The term, especially in the modern era, is incredibly anachronistic and almost always used as a
pejorative. It’s for this latter reason that Empires are almost always reserved for
the bad guy faction regardless of their political system.
Case in point, the Helghan Empire
is a fascist authoritarian state that should have been given a more accurate name. It's not really an Empire.
Republic, Commonwealth, Federation, Confederation, Empires, these cover basically every type of
government you could conceivably include in the name of your nation.
Often though, writers use other terms that don’t really fit or just don’t make sense, with varying success.
Let’s start with one of the more popular examples of this. Alliance. The problem with
using Alliance as the formal name of a government is that the basic definition of the word doesn’t really
work in that context and it's implied meaning is much better conveyed by Federation or Federal Republic.
There's just no real reason to use the term Alliance
when you have other words that can more accurately describe a system of government.
The only example where I think Alliance was used somewhat realistically was in Firefly.
The Anglo-Sino Alliance is only the colloquial name for the Union of Allied Planets, which
while not perfect, makes a bit more sense within the context of the world. Even modern
military alliances rarely include alliance in the name, so even if the future world government
evolved out of some great alliance, they’d probably just change the name at some point.
The same goes for Coalition, which is just another word for Alliance.
I can accept it as the name of a group of states, but not as a single united nation.
So, moving onwards.
One of the easiest terms to misuse is Protectorate. A protectorate is a dependent territory that
has been granted some level of autonomy from a greater sovereign state. The Vol Protectorate
from Mass Effect uses this term correctly as they are a client species under the Turians.
The Kavithan Protectorate from Beyond Earth by contrast is not by definition a Protectorate.
Next on my list of terms that shouldn’t be used is Hegemony. This is a term used to
describe a state which enjoys a position of predominance over all others. While this can
be used to describe a nation, for that nation to include it within their formal name is almost
comically belligerent. That pretty much describes the Batarians though, so I can forgive them for using it.
Moving on to Unions. I don’t actually have a problem with this one and it would most likely be
used as a substitute for Federation or Confederation. It also just sounds cool. While the
term Union seems to be somewhat affiliated with authoritarianism, probably because of
the Soviet Union, I think it works in any capacity, such as in the fascist Cardassian
Union or the democratic Planetary Union. You can take your pick.
Now, last on my list of government terms is the very simple State.
This a boring, but perfectly reasonable option. I mean, if you can't think of anything better.
Ok, so now we move on to the second part of our nation’s name. If for example we are
a Confederation, what are we the Confederation of? For alien civilizations, this is easy, just insert the
name of your race or some other weird alien word.
For a future version of humanity though,
it’s an interesting question.
The easy answer here might be just Earth, as in the Confederation of Earth. The problem with this
is that if this nation is a true interstellar civilization with various colonies spread
across multiple star systems, using Earth in the name represents only a portion of your
citizenry. The United States after all isn’t the United States of Washington DC.
So what about naming it after some element of interstellar geography. The United Federation
of Planets, the Systems Alliance. Well, naming a nation after planets or star systems doesn’t
make a lot of sense either. Nations on Earth aren’t called the Federation of Lakes or
the Republic of Mountains. And in the case of the United Federation of Planets, Andoria
is a moon, a trivial point maybe, but still.
I think what's needed in this case is a word that represents all of humanity but isn’t tied
to a specific place, nation, or even planetary body. Mankind and Human don’t really work
in this context and I think sound kinda goofy. The best candidate in my opinion is Terran.
I think the major reason not to use Terran is that it’s become so associated with science
fiction that to use it in the real world, it just seems a bit of a joke.
But I think it has a few points in its favor, as a latin word it’s part of a language
that has already become something of an international standard and most importantly, it just sounds
cool. And isn’t that the most important factor? So with that in mind, I’d like to
mention a few interstellar civilizations with truly cool and unique names,
as well as those with just awful ones.
First up on my "Best of" list is the United Nations Space Command.
This is a great example of how to get around
the limited number of government types and have something unique and distinct.
It's a bit of a cheat as the UNSC is an emergency military government rather than a true sovereign state,
but it works perfectly well in the context of the Halo Universe and the constant war against the Covenant.
I do have to mention though that the original civilian state, known as the United Earth Government,
that's just an incredibly bland name.
Next up is the Imperium of Man. After all my complaints about how you should never name
your government an Empire, it might seem hypocritical of me to include Imperium, which is essentially
the same thing. The Imperium works here however because not only does it evoke the Roman stylings
that the Imperium is largely based on, but it also serves to underscore how human words and
concepts had drifted and changed across the millennia to become more acceptable
or find new meaning.
The Turian Hierarchy is maybe one of the most successful examples of creating a new type
of government in science fiction. Calling a human nation a Hierarchy would come across
as a bit forced, but in the case of the Turians its great and accurately represents their
society and government.
Last on the "Best of" list,
is The United Colonies of Kobol. Once again, this is a name that only works because of
the immense amount of backstory and context that is given to the origins of humanity in Battlestar Galactica.
In other uses the word “colony” might come across as being submissive to some foreign
state, but here it serves as a reminder of humanity’s long-lost homeland.
Now let's move onto names that just don’t work.
The Settlement Defense Front from Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. Now, this is what you’d
call a group of terrorists or some sort of small militia group. It evokes imagery of ragtag
partisans rather than the formidable fascist state its intended to be. This is doubly annoying
because the Settlement Defense Front is described as being highly nationalistic but lacks any
sort of credible national identity.
The Galactic Federation of Free Alliances from Star Wars Legends is perhaps the worst
name ever given to an interstellar nation.
A Federation of Alliances makes no sense
and if you have the need to include “free” in the name of your country, you’re probably
over compensating.
The United Empire of Earth. What's strange about Star Citizen is that you can clearly see
all the effort put into making the technology, ships and specific aspects of the worldbuilding
realistic, but the overarching political storyline comes across as kinda clueless.
Originally formed as the United Nations of Earth, a significant percentage of the population on the colonies
was apparently dissatisfied with their lack of representation and the government was renamed
the United Planets of Earth, which ironically does very little to represent the people other
than those on Earth.
Later a megalomaniac decided to create the “United Empire of Earth” and
starts using terminology from the Roman Empire. Not only is this completely ridiculous but
to think that the same technologically advanced, educated and politically literate population
that seemed to have such a problem with the “United Nations of Earth” would be okay
with any of these recent developments are laughable.
Stranger still is why the United Empire of Earth wasn’t
renamed after revolution restored democratic rule. It is perhaps the best example of a
government whose name is completely out of sync with its character.
Next, is anything with a specific reference to space in it. Star Kingdoms, Star Empire,
United Space Nations, whatever the use, I find it highly dubious that a nation would
decide to rename itself just because they made it into space.
And lastly, what kind of video would this be if I didn’t make fun of something that
our pal Spacedock really enjoys.
The Alliance of Awakened Nations from Battlezone 2 is just
a terrible name. Apparently they’re called that because Earth nations have become
aware or awakened to the reality of some alien space minerals.
Even ignoring the use of Alliance here, Awakened Nations is such a strange way to describe
various countries who have decided to work together.
Can a country be denied entry into the Alliance for not being woke? This to me
is emblematic of a greater problem, all too often the distinction between a military alliance
and sovereign state becomes kinda muddled. The Alliance of Awakened Nations is just one
example among many of governments that don’t meet the requirements of an actual sovereign state.
So now that I’ve criticized plenty of names, can I do any better? What would I name an
interstellar human government? Well, there are plenty of valid answers so instead I think
I’ll go with the most believable one. At least to me.
A federation, I think, is the most likely choice
for a future government system. Even if the Earth is united under a central authority, I still
think various nations will continue to exist and exert some level of influence. And while
I do like the sound of “Terran” I just think it’s too associated with science
fiction to ever really be a realistic option. So my choice would be the United Federation of
Nations. It infers a sort of lineage to the United Nations and avoids many of the pitfalls I
mentioned earlier.
So that's my choice and that just about does it.
If you take away any sort of moral or lesson from this video
it should be that when coming up with such a fundamental aspect of a country's national
identity, words should not be chosen arbitrarily. If a Federation functions more along the lines
of a Unitary Republic, that's okay, but there should be some sort of context or explanation for how this
shift occurred. If an advanced civilization is governed by a hereditary monarchy,
there should be a realistic, or at least a plausible explanation for how such an archaic
form of government has come back into use and why it just doesn't immediately fall apart
when applied to modern economics and society.
Thank you all for watching and as always we’d like to hear your thoughts.
What's a good name for a spacefaring empire?
Is the United Federation of Nations a terrible name?
Is the United Empire of Earth actually brilliant? The answer to both of these is “no” but
feel free to try to convince me.
The Templin Institute investigates nations, organizations, and factions from alternate worlds and realities.
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