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. If you've enjoyed this video, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing. Do you have a suggestion for a future episode? Let us know by leaving a comment.
I really don't think that autocracies are outdated.
Calling them "ineffective" is obscure, sure they have tend to have more infighting, but when stable they tend to be excessively productive.
Sure there is, either inadequate leaders get deposed or power shifts.
I thought we were talking about autocracies, not the opposite.
I guess feudal in this context would mean a system where planets of the realm are owned by individual as fiefs. I fail to see how such system would oppose realism and make them inherently incompetent. At worst case they would function like a confederation.
I guess we are talking about just monarchism. Too bad that such system has no way of rewarding merit, if only there was something called nobles of the robe.
Technically such crises would support meritocracy. As long as they don't go on for decades, they offer the opportunity to consolidate more central authority.
Ever so many reasons, many of which might not exists on an another planet.
Comically belligerent? Yeah, that's the Terran Hegemony for ya.
(Though personally even I'm not happy with using "Terran" due to just how overused it is but I've grown too attached to it now, plus I do still think it works rather well.)
I liked this video. The Templin Institute guy read my mind about the word salad that is "Viceroy of the Trade Federation".
However, I don't think he gives enough weight to historical inertia. Take the word "Empire". At 7:05 he says, "an empire is generally defined as a collection of nations or people brought together by force or the threat of force." Fair enough, in practice it usually does mean something like that, with the additional implication that it involves one nation ruling over others.
But the original meaning was that an empire did not submit to any higher political authority. Hence Henry VIII's declaration that "England is an empire entire unto itself" - the point was to declare that he was not subject to the Pope. Ruling over foreign countries did not yet come into it. The British Empire, and indeed Britain, lay in the future. I can imagine that a nation founded by asserting its own independence might end up being called an "empire" on those grounds.
If that's a little fanciful, a more likely inspiration for a space nation having the title "empire" without having full-on imperialism might be found at the tail end of the British Empire, when it had given up on the claim that it had the permanent right to rule other countries and was trying to morph into something more like a confederation. Hence Churchill's "Let us ... so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' " You also got WWII posters like this one showing a soldier of the King's African Rifles and bearing the legend "The British Colonial Empire - Our Allies the Colonies". All the colonies are listed at the two sides. It is odd to modern eyes to see "the British Colonial Empire" mixed in with calling the colonies "allies", which has a much more egalitarian vibe than "colonial empire". But that's the sort of situation you can get when a state moves on from one form to another, while still retaining the labels of the old form.
After all that, you'd think I'd have called some relatively non-forced-based state an "empire" in my own worldbuilding. So far I haven't, though I do use a couple of names that go in the other direction, i.e. sounding benign and harmless while actually the states/groupings they describe are rather ruthless.
The criticism of the Trade Federation's name isn't entirely warranted. Non-country entities do on occasion call themselves federations if they're composed of a central structure surrounded by chapters of limited autonomy -- there's the American Federation of Labor, for example, or the Federation of American Scientists. The Trade Federation could easily just be an economic bloc of corporations that share certain common policies at the "federal" level.
The Viceroy part, though... yeah, that's a little... yeah.
I have a nation called the Peoples Hegemony.
Calling them "belligerent" would be the nice way of putting it.
Space Feudalism you say? Muahahahahaha
Added 'bonus' of calling my Space Feudal State the Galactic Union