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In the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert video Sasheer Zamata Is A Tough Name For Certain People after about 02:00 the comedienne says:

…my name doesn’t come from any African or island culture. It’s from Star Trek. My parents are trekkies. And they were really into trekkie culture.

My mom found the original script where my name comes from, and realized that my parents accidentally misspelled my name.

Question: From what Star Trek script was Sasheer Zamata's name taken from, and what was the original spelling?

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This is from TOS: By Any Other Name. Zamata described the circumstances a bit more clearly in this interview

ZAMATA: ...Captain Kirk was flirting with this alien princess, as he does. And he gave her a rose. And she goes, oh, we have something like this on my planet except it's made out of crystal and it's called Sasheer. And my parents were like yes...

And we can see the correct spelling in the Blish novelisation of the episode (based on the original script).

“Flowers,” he said, moving closer to her, cautiously. “I don’t know the variety.”

“Our memory tapes tell us of such things on Kelva,” Rojan said. “Crystals which form with such rapidity that they seem to grow. They look like these; fragile things, somewhat. We call them ‘sahsheer.’”

Star Trek 6: By Any Other Name

Interestingly sahsheer crystals receive a name-check in the EU novel Aftermath despite being native to another galaxy.

“That’s the part of war people don’t talk about much. Sure, the loss of life is horrible—the Breen took a lot of my friends that day. And the property losses, okay, those are bad too. But it’s a damn sight easier to rebuild a lecture hall or an office complex than it is to regrow a Gordian oak or a sahsheer crystal."

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  • I certainly remember the episode, but I don't recall this scene. I'll have to go look it up, thanks!
    – uhoh
    Commented Jul 29, 2018 at 12:01

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