This thread is a two part question.
1. Why not have “Equus” be the name of a language family, like how Romantic languages include Spanish and French? Not the name of the planet.

2. What if the ponies thought that Planet Earth (human world) was named "Humi" or "Humus," which in Latin means 'ground,' 'soil,' 'land,' or 'country?’
------------------------

Argument for 1#.
Some Navy SEALs 2823147 brings up a very good point about the name of the pony planet. The word “Equus” sounds much more like a root language that would eventually spawn Equish, the main language of Equestria than it does the name of their world.

It doesn’t make much sense for the inhabitants a millennia ago to basically name their world “horse” or “self” since the words “horse” and “self” would already be taken by the point they decide to assign a name to the planet as a whole (as opposed to naming only the individual pieces like “our country,” “their country,” “land of monsters,” etc.)

Argument for 2#.
What if the ponies thought that Planet Earth (human world) was named "Humi" or "Humus," which in Latin means 'ground,' 'soil,' 'land,' or 'country.' "Humi" sounds very similar to "human" and would make the link between us super sexy bipedal dudes and our own biblical mythology where the first man (Adam) is made out of clay.

Humans: people of the ground.

I mean, I'm asking this because Lyra Heartstrings seems to know about humans in some way (most likely though myths rather than first hand experience.) I'm just curious what her knowlage base might actually entail.

That's surprisingly well thought out for my tired mind. Your idea = stolen.

2829437

I'm asking this because Lyra Heartstrings seems to know about humans in some way

Dude, she sat up, like, once. She was probably imitating Minotaurs, Gryphons, or Dragons; you know? The canon races that sit up like that? She doesn't know about space monkeys.

2829437
k
I just call it earth and they just speak english.

2829459
I'm really talking more about the fan interpretation of Lyra, not the bland canon cartoon version. My question is directed to the contributors to the same universe where a man can sexually satisfy a horse.

2829459
At most it could be a Star Wars fan type obsession she has with humans.
She knows they are fake but she just nerds out over the stories that have them in them. She isn't an "I know they are real out there somewhere" obsessed fan. She just likes them and doesn't let her liking a particular fictional story control her life.

2829498

where a man can sexually satisfy a horse.

A man can. He just has to rub it's clit with his hand.
Plus a man can't sexually satisfy a human woman with just his dick irl either. He has to do extra shit to get her to cum.

90% of this fandom is fan generated many people only watch the show to get a more accurate headcanon

I feel like the conversation has gotten off track somehow...

Well, anyway, How about these names for the planet of ponies?
Laeta, or Laetus : fertile land, luxuriant/ lush/ rich, pleasing/ welcome, teeming/ abounding
Pratum or Prati : broad expanse/ field/ plain (land/sea), meadow grass/ crop, meadow, meadowland
Decurro, Decurrere, Decurri, or Decursus : come to land/ end, hasten, run/ hurry/ rush/ flow/ slope down, travel downstream
Adplico, Adplicare, Adplicui, or Adplicitus : adapt, apply/devote to, connect, place near, bring into contact
Terra or Terrae : country, region, earth, land, ground
Tellus or Telluris : earth, ground, land, country, the earth
Cultus : civilization, refinement, habitation, polish, elegance

2829595
How in the world did your reply end up in my sub box without an ">>" thing? Teach me your magical ways, Azreon!

2829437

if i understand both your questions correctly, you're thinking that the ponies would be making the same naming assumption error for us that we do for them, even when they themselves wouldn't do it for their planet. if Lyra is smart enough to catch that then regardless of what the legends say our planets name is, she wouldn't think so or at least have strong reason not to.

all of your threads recently seem to be gathering information for a future fic, cant wait to read it.

2829633
As I said in the conversation that apparently spawned this; I think it would be nice to simply reverse the cliche and have the ponies make the same stupid assumption the fans have to put it all into context.

2829742

i personally dont care either way. i just wanted to point out the contradiction and why lyra (if she was smart enough in the story) would notice it. having lyra go against the majority is what i would like to see, regardless of which side she's on.

2829633
That's exactly what I think... That they would make the same error that we would. They probably hadn't heard or *more likely* correctly documented the word "Earth" as our planet. If their mythology about us were based on some real-world encounter and the first few generations of ponies were trying to correctly relay the story of us visiting them, then they wouldn't (at first) try to make up terms to fill in the tale's gaps.

They'd repurpose (and most likely overuse) the terms that they knew. "Uh... He's called a 'human' from planet 'humannia' and his language is called 'human-ese.' "

...
And while I've got a handful of scattered scenes and 1/5th of a story planned out...., most of my threads where I'm gathering info is really just to fuel my head canon. Basically, I'm populating my inner insane world with small nuggets of semi-plausible facts elaborately connected together into a working continuity.

Currently, it's what I do instead of writing manifestoes in a darkened cabin somewhere in the rural north, however, I do plan on going back to that hobby soon.

2829632 I put a >> posted but then deleted that part

2829831
Damn, that's an elegant way of contacting someone while keeping the post relatively ambiguous about who you're talking to from the general public's perspective. It looks, for all the world, like you're just posting a general statement on a thread.

That's actually pretty cool.

2829827 This seems very likely. The phenomenon you're referring to is an Exonym. A word or phrase used by one population to refer to another that the population in question does not use or uses differently. Like the US and other western nations referring to Nippon as Japan. Japan is not a Japanese word in any context, but it's pretty much universally accepted to mean Nippon.

2829875 yay I'm special

2829886
Fun history lesson. We get "Japan" from Marco Polo attempting the best he could to make sense of the name the Chinese call Japan. The word he ended up calling Japan was "Cipangu."

2829886
Cool! I never knew the term for that phenomenon! "Exonym..." "Exonym..." Thank you very much, I'll hold on to it. Good vocabulary word.

As a side note, you wouldn't happen to have a rough estimate about long it takes, how many generations, before a population no longer recognizes the exonym as being a wrong translation? I took exactly 1 anthropology class and that was years ago. You, however, seem to know your stuff.

2829996 That's an issue of rate of transmission. How culturally relevant is the population in question? how connected are the people who speak about them to that nation? To each other? to the rest of the world? any number of factors could go into it but if only one account of the exonym is provided and the proper name is not learned then the exonym becomes, to the listener, the proper name. It can be as quickly as a generation or as slowly as centuries.

2829983 Ahh. Thanks! I love learning new things. Figures it would be a European explorer to get it wrong.

2829437 Why would they call us humans then? this is a great idea keep it up.

2830224
Well, either the humans they met repeatedly called themselves "humans" and the ponies just happen to remember this particular term rather than... "soldier," "scientist," "man," or "woman,"

....or, and this is the one I think I like more, the ponies came to that term independently.

Humans might have originally been called "Humi" or "Humus" in Equish Lore which referred to 'ground,' 'soil,' or 'land.' Depending on what the original myth was, humans might be creatures made from clay (like Adam in the bible), or creatures that dwell underground (like dwarves), or they might be the supposed creators of highly technological relics found in the ground (a slight spin on the ancient astronaut theory), or they were the equivalent of 'Earth ponies' when compared to humanoid angels and magi.

Whatever it was, it had something to do with the ground. The word "human" is just a bastardized pronunciation of "people of the ground."

2829452 Ah yes, the good 'ol college try.

2829437

The irony here is that somewhere, way out in the cosmos, there is a pony, and that pony is tired of all the authors on their equivalent to this site calling the human world 'Humus', so she just posted the analogue to this thread.

2830441 Ok. Do the ponies see us as direct children of the lord of creation then? How does each tribe react or think about humans? What do the other races think of humans? In a story I am working on humans are viewed as mythical beings of elderich knowledge and we are viewed as representing war, conquest, competition, and authority.

2830441 P.S. I don't mean to be mean but the first man in the bible is Adam not Atom. or is that what ponies call him?

2830807
Oh, shit... you're right. I pronounce both as "adam" so... I've been misspelling his name for years. Okay, I've corrected the spelling and thank you for pointing it out to me.

2829502

2830878 no problem.

2830891 Shouldn't you be working as a Gentlemen in Equestria? I thought I left you there!

also...

2830950 I'm on a paid vacation.

Compliments of the Royal Pony Sisters

I'll be back in a week...gonna have to get some yoga classes.

2830972 I cant believe you already paid of that $50,000 you owed me... how many "jobs" do you do a day?!?

2831035 Enough to buy a condo on the moon

You don't want to know what I do in there...or do you?

2831069 Luna you deviant.

2831100 Contrary to popular belief, the moon doesn't have craters on it...

It's nice and smooth...

I contemplated on calling the Pony land Erf once, due to the general, cartoony atmosphere of the universe...

2829609

Call it Aeon, because that is a cool name.

From what you have listed, avoid Terra. It is a little cliched. Out of the rest you listed, I like Tellus.

2829437

Well i guess its perfectly valid. Also another word for earth/land is terram. Terra is used as a word in alot of fiction universes to state earth Terra i believe also translates into earth.

Alternatively, Equus is both the name of the root language, a precursor pony species and the world? It's entirely possible that ponies are ethnocentrist enought to name their planet after themselves, or alternatively it's entirely possible they named their language and species after their planet.