History Main / CallARabbitASmeerp

* In ''[[GURPSBanestorm]]'', the descriptions of bushwolves, paladins, treetippers, and milkfish (native non-magical animals) sound like thylacines, glyptodonts, giant sloths, and manatees. The different names make sense since the medieval-era humans who had been brought to Yrth by the Banestorm had never seen them before (they were either extinct or from lands not yet reached by Europeans or continental Asians) and gave them their own names.

->''"And behold, out of the mists of time, the legendary Esquilax! A horse with the head of a rabbit, and... the body of a rabbit!"''\\
-- '''Chief Wiggum''', ''Series/TheSimpsons''

See Part One of the SFWA's Webpage/TurkeyCityLexicon for more detail. Writers are warned against this trope in OrsonScottCard's ''How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy''. However this trope can also be used intelligently by works with characters that are part of a culture that [[{{Xenofiction}} has a unique way of viewing familiar concepts]] (e.g., the rabbits from WatershipDown).

** In ''[[Literature/{{Ringworld}} The Ringworld Throne]]'', Niven calls some tasty rabbit-like critters "smeerps", as a reference to the {{Trope Namer|s}}, the Webpage/TurkeyCityLexicon.

** In ''[[Literature/{{Ringworld}} The Ringworld Throne]]'', Niven calls some tasty rabbit-like critters "smeerps", as a reference to the {{Trope Namer|s}}, the TurkeyCityLexicon.

See Part One of the SFWA's TurkeyCityLexicon for more detail. Writers are warned against this trope in OrsonScottCard's ''How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy''. However this trope can also be used intelligently by works with characters that are part of a culture that [[{{Xenofiction}} has a unique way of viewing familiar concepts]] (e.g., the rabbits from WatershipDown).

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' doesn't have the Internet, it has the extranet.

* In ''TheUnderlandChronicles'', the assorted oversized creatures of the overworld are given simpler names, allegedly by the people who live there. (Rats are known as "gnawers", spiders as "spinners", and so on.) This is what the creatures of the Underworld actually call themselves, just translated into the nearest thing in English. Humans have one of these names too among the Underworld creatures[[note]][[HumansAreTheRealMonsters "killer"]][[/note]], [[FantasticRacism but they don't like to hear it]].

->''"Behold, ye Esquilax! The horse with the head of a rabbit, and... the body of a rabbit!"''\\

** The commentary track for the first film actually admits that "lycan" is a contraction of "lycanthrope," and that they used it because they thought "werewolf" would sound cheesy. [[SarcasmMode As opposed to "vampire,"]] [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer which lends it that touch of classic elegance.]]

* [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Earth#Animal_species Wookieepedia]] has an exhaustive list of this trope as it applies to ''StarWars''. Dice, for example, are called "chance cubes". ...Although actual dice with pips instead of colors have appeared and gone by "dice" in the EU.

-->'''Gabe:''' "These goddamned Star Wars writers just don't know when to stop. This jackass just said that something can go '[[HoldYourHippogriffs through a ferrocrete bunker like a neutrino through plasma]].' I get it, man. It says 'Star Wars' on the cover. I know I'm reading about 'Star Wars'. It's like, do they not have butter in space? Or hot knives to cut it with?"
* StarWarsExpandedUniverse is a grab bag of names - looking at alcoholic drinks alone, there's lomin-ale, Corellian Whiskey (with brands like Whyren's Reserve), lum, juri juice, [[Literature/DeathStar A Walk In The Phelopean Forest]] (even the bartender doesn't know what's with the name), Savareen Brandy, and a [[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Alcoholic_beverages lot more.]] There are occasional subversions; a duck is still a duck, for example.

** In the ''{{Timeline-191}}'' series, a fictional character with the last name Blackford is president during TheGreatDepression instead of HerbertHoover, resulting in shanty towns of unlucky stockholders being called Blackfordburgs rather than Hoovervilles. Also, with the [[RomanovsAndRevolutions Russian Revolution]] a dismal failure, the Molotov cocktail is renamed "Featherston fizz" after the series' AdolfHitler equivalent. Finally, tanks are called "barrels" because, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_in_World_War_I paralleling the origin of the Real Life term]], they were first made in a building labeled "the Barrel Works".

* TimothyZahn, in his StarWarsExpandedUniverse novels, generally tries, with the exception of hot chocolate, to keep to this trope, since the 'verse is very not Earth and involves humans, but few other Earth animals. He tends not to describe nonhumans in great detail, but will mention avians in the brush or hostile canid creatures. This does lead to some readers wondering how "avian" is less an Earthism than "bird", and why he'll use "snake".

* ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons'' did this a lot, despite us being tired of it after ''WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones'' [[FlintstoneTheming did it first]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSnorks'' is a great example of this. They have Shellovisions, not Televisions. [[FlintstoneTheming Things are changed to be underwater related]].

** Pikkards are actually ''not'' an example, though they're easily mistaken for such. Despite taking on the same role in the game world as pigs do in real life -- both as livestock, and in phrases like "pikkard sty" --they're actually a giant rodent-like mammal somewhat resembling a hamster.

** Pikkards are actually ''not'' an example, though they're easily mistaken for such. Despite taking on the same role in the game world as pigs do in real life -- both as livestock, and in phrases like "pikkard sty" --they're actually a giant rodent resembling a hamster.

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Ys}}'' universe, wolves are called "rhebolls", squirrels are "quias", pigs are "pikkards", etc.

* ''The Court Of The Air'' goes berserk with this trope, coming up with alternate Steam-Punky names for everything from journalists ("pensmen") to computers ("transaction engines") to the sun itself ("the Circle"). Some of the Smeerp-names, amusingly, also have entirely unrelated meanings in English, such as "cardsharps" for computer programmers (because they poke holes in punch-cards to operate the mechanical transaction engines).

* TamoraPierce does this from time to time. Her TortallUniverse in particular takes leaps and bounds in development from the earliest books to the latest ones, with all kinds of details added to keep what was a very eighties swords-and-sorcery world running smoothly, many of which seem suspiciously modern for their setting. Trouble is, she occasionally forgets what needs renaming and what doesn't. The process of a "new exercise" Kel learns as a page is meticulously described...and turns out to be a push-up. Which Alanna did in her first book, where they were identified by name and not [[ViewersAreMorons explained]].
** To give an example, the 'duckbill' in Immortals #4 was actually a platypus

* ''Eschalon'' Books One and Two does this in several instances. It ain't a minotaur, it's a Taurax. It ain't a giant spider, it's a Phase Hunter. It ain't a giant black beetle, it's a Goliath Borehead.

%%[[folder:Fanfiction]]
%%[[/folder]]

* ChinaMieville's uses "chymistry" in his [[Literature/{{Bas-LagCycle}} New Crobuzon]] setting, though this may fall more into the "Magick With A K" category.

* Fred Saberhagen's Literature/EmpireOfTheEast trilogy and sequel series, the Literature/BookOfSwords, are both guilty of this to a somewhat ridiculous degree. Granted that they are set 50,000 years in the future and the English language has been lost (writing in English is described as unintelligible to the characters); is it really neccesary to call horses "riding-beasts" and mules "load-beasts"? Not to mention "milk-beasts" and "wool-beasts". Yet birds are birds, dragons are dragons, and "potatoes" are still a named vegetable. Also confusingly subverted when we are introduced to the "war-beast", apparently some new type of lion or puma hybrid which can also be ridden.