16

I haven't watched the shows in years, but if I remember correctly each stargate symbol has an arbitrarily assigned "name" which may be a consonant, vowel or syllable. The ancients used these to identify addresses in speech, like Earth's numerical designations, and sometimes assigned meanings to certain addresses (e.g. one was lost in fire?).

Were the names explained anywhere? I cannot find a list through google except for obvious fanfiction which contradicts the show's names.

2
  • 2
    I've seen all of SG-1 and all the movies. They never name any of them explicitly, except for the episode where they initially put forward this theory, and Daniel or Jack says, 'Paklaroush Teounash'. I'm sure they could have had him sit down and name each of the sigils, but there's no on-screen confirmation that they did this.
    – Jeff
    Commented Mar 9, 2017 at 18:19

3 Answers 3

18

The vocalizations of the Stargate glyphs are only ever described in a single episode, the season 7 finale "Lost City", when Jack sounds out seven of them, corresponding to the address of Praclarush Taonas1 (glyphs pictured below), plus the Earth point-of-origin:

enter image description here

Jack also explicitly identifies the vocalizations of two glyphs in isolation:

  • "Sh"

    enter image description here

  • "At"

    enter image description here

Determining how to divide "Praclarush Taonas" into six syllables, such that "sh" is the third, is left as an exercise for the reader.

This leaves 31 glyphs, in the Milky Way alone, with no identifiable vocalizations. It's presumed that they exist, but they're never mentioned on the show. Likewise, if this vocalization scheme is used in the other gate systems we see (Pegasus and Destiny gates), it's never discussed.


1 Which Daniel translates as "Lost in Fire" (later revealed to have been mostly-swallowed by a volcano):

Daniel: Praclarush Taonas. According to this it means lost in fire. It was lost.

Stargate SG-1 Season 7 Episode 22: "Lost City, Part 2"

9
  • 1
    My guess would have been [Rush][Te][O] instead of [Ru][Sh][Teo]
    – Izkata
    Commented Mar 9, 2017 at 19:26
  • After some googling I got the ancient name for Atlantis as "Lantea Atlantus" and the stargate address at the wiki. Not sure how it maps though. Other similar names include "vaclarush". Did the writers think this out or was it quickly forgotten?
    – Anonymous
    Commented Mar 9, 2017 at 20:06
  • @Anonymous "After some googling I got the ancient name for Atlantis as 'Lantea Atlantus'" Never heard of that in the show. Commented Mar 9, 2017 at 20:08
  • @LightnessRacesinOrbit I presume it's a fan-assumption based on the construction of Praclarush Taonas; outpost "Atlantus" on planet "Lantea" Commented Mar 9, 2017 at 20:17
  • 1
    @Izkata Normally I'd be inclined to agree, but I just re-watched the episode and Jack specifically calls out the hourglass shape as "Sh". Since I can't for the life of me figure out how to split the phrase up with this new information, I'm just gonna leave it Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 0:25
6

Not only does s7e22 mention the Ancient names of planets, but also s10e3: The Pegasus Project.
While trying to find Merlins weapon, Morgan le Fay mentions two worlds by their Ancient names: Taoth Vaclarush and Valos Cor.

The addresses are shown on the hologram (albeit not in high quality) so more symbols may be mapped, but Valos Cor sounds a bit short.
The addresses

Further than the s7 episode, none of the symbols are explained but the pronunciation of Vaclarush implies the writers may have still be drawing from the same schema. It may be possible to cross refernce sounds and symbols between the sources, but a complete 1-to-1 mapping is not outlined in the series.

The Pegasus Project

I was going to post as a comment on Jason Bakers answer but I lack the rep.

1
  • I tried comparing the syllables with the glyphs, but there did not seem to be any consistent naming scheme.
    – Anonymous
    Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 14:20
0

At is cannonly translated as "home" which is why its the sound of the symbol for Earth (Terra), this also means Atlantis is translated as "home of the Lanteans" which is completely independent of the name of any planet. No matter where Atlantis is, its still the home of the Lanteans (Ancients). To my knowledge, this is the only glyph whose phonetics we know for sure.

1
  • What's your source for this information?
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Nov 15, 2017 at 1:09

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.