Just read one of Urusla Le Guin’s books where humans sent off some unwanted people, no scientists, to another planet and they brought up how hundreds of years into living there, they still give arbitrary names to things. E.g. naming an animal Heron because it kind of resembles one, but this is an alien world, so it is really not.
Anyways, at one point one of the characters asks why people still use the name Victoria for the planet, as this was named by Earth people. And then suggested to just call the planet Mud, since they got so much of it. Was half a joke but later in the book some people do use Mud as a name for it.
Dicska@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
This joke would be rather hard to translate to my language because we use the same word for dirt (as in, ‘soil’ - in fact, in certain cases for actual soil, as well) as for Earth. Or ground.
We only have a separate word for the unclean meaning of dirt, or a compound word containing dirt to denote soil.
I can easily imagine this as an actual attempt from a beginner English speaker from home.