Spock's family name (TOS questions answered)

[syredronning]

TOS things you might have wondered about - where does Spock's supposedly unpronouncable family name come from?

It's from the first fanzine Spockanalia 2, page 10 (published April 19, 1968)



Written by Dorothy Fontana(!) in a correspondence answering some Spock questions.

Canon or not canon?
Officially, only the TV series and the movies, i.e all that made it to the big screen, is canon. And a few of the TAS episodes, like the one where Spock aka Selek saves himself.

Spockanalia (1-5) are not canon, just as Dorothy Fontana's pro-novel is not canon - OTOH it's as close to THE SOURCE as anything non-canon can be, IMVHO :) Take that as you will.

Comments

[diane-kepler.livejournal.com]

Here's something that I picked up off Wikipedia:

The final page of Ishmael proposes that the Vulcan family name of Spock and his father Sarek is S'chn T'gai. The book ends with Kirk accessing the personnel record of his first officer, which reveals that Amanda Grayson's middle name is Stemple and that she was born in Seattle, Washington, thereby suggesting that Spock's mother is a descendent of Aaron Stemple. The same personnel record gives Spock's full name as S'chn T'gai Spock and his father as S'chn T'gai Sarek.

Spock's family name has never been revealed on screen and only referred to as "unpronounceable" to humans (in the episodes This Side of Paradise and Journey to Babel). Although S'chn T'gai has yet to be accepted as the character's family name in canon, it should be noted that the forenames for Sulu and Uhura first proposed in other Pocket Books Star Trek novels of this period (Hikaru and Nyota respectively) have subsequently been accepted as canon by Paramount, as evidenced by the usage of both names in the 2009 feature film.

So Spock's family name (or patronymic, since it comes through the father) is not TV- or Film-canon, but it is book-canon.

Is that canonical enough?

And am I not the biggest nerd you ever saw?

[illariy.livejournal.com]

Barbara Hambly mentioned S'Chn T'Gai as Spock's family name again in another of her Trek novels, Crossroad. Interestingly, a clan related to Spock's is called T'Gai Khir in that novel, suggesting that the clan names can be composites.

But then, in Trek traditionally nothing is canon except that which was actually filmed and shown on screen so the rest is equally accept-or-dismiss-at-will. ;-)

[fer-de-lance.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating to me because, having never seen the original series, I have no way of telling what-if-anything over in the burst of fic the movie has created is really canonical.

I have seen S'Chn T'Gai once in fic, but never the string-of-random-letters in the Spockanalia excerpt.

Having seen it, however, now my biggest question is: Is there actually any Spock anal in Spockanalia?

Inquiring slashers want to know! :D (And are mentally 12, to boot.)

[seticat.livejournal.com]

I remember reading 'Spockanalia' when it came out. And 'Sick Bay', which was the fan zine for the De Kelly fanclub. heck, I wrote a couple of short articles for the latter...

... a *very* long time ago.