yuhangyuan

[mmcirvin]

China's first manned space mission may launch within the next couple of weeks.

The official Chinese word for an astronaut is "yuhangyuan", but some space buffs have been calling them "taikonauts" for years. Can't we just drop the use of different words for astronauts launched by different countries, and call them all "astronauts" as long as we're using English? The astronaut/cosmonaut usage is an awkward Sixties Space Race relic, not something you'd want to extend arbitrarily into a future in which all sorts of entities may launch people into space.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Why should it be "astronaut"? It's kind of a stupid word. Name another "-naut", outside of Greek mythology (which is hopelessly Euro-weeny-ish). No, I'm sorry, whatever examples you just thought of are not valid for reasons to obvious to go into here, unless you said "afronaut", which is a fine word, and one I could certainly get behind. "-naut" is a silly suffix in all other situations.

How about "Space Ranger"? "Star (Wo)Man?" "Galactic Sojourner?" "Skyy Walker?" "Space Cadet?" "Sailor on the Cosmic Seas?" There are a number of wonderful terms for "a person who travels in space", none of which are America-centric, and any of which are far smoother than anything the Europeans are going to come up with. (Let me guess: "Euronaut"? Yawn.) Let alone the Chinese, Indians, Russians, and other potential space powers so backward and contemptable and foreign that just thinking about them makes me want to move to the Moon.

-Andrew N

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

We can just call them all "Sailor Moon" and be done with it.

[(Anonymous)]

Done.

-AN

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Since we're not actually sending anyone out into space these days, but rather sending people just outside the atmoshere so they can do stuff with test tubes and bunsen burners and things, we should call them Orbit Weenies or something.