Are Galaxy/System names real?

Hi I’m new here but found this by doing a search for some of the galaxy or system names that show up in a game because I was trying to figure out if they were real names or not but this was the only match found and each of them I looked for are in your list above. The Game is “No Man’s Sky”.

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@Mistake All the names in No Man’s Sky are procedurally generated. If they resemble real life names it is mostly just a coincidence.

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@Mistake: I have turned your reply in an ‘archived’ topic (Atlas Rises) into a new topic for the current version of the game (Beyond).

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Hello Games likely chose some galaxy names based on certain criteria. For example, Sean Murray used the British term “maths” when describing what’s behind procedural generation in No Man’s Sky. Euclid was an ancient Greek mathematician. David Hilbert was a mathematician. Hence, Hilbert Dimension. Also do a web search for “Hilbert Space.”

See more in the “Naming Conventions” section of the Galaxy page at the No Man’s Sky Wiki.

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If by “real” you mean “names of actually existing celestial objects”, then no. Not at all.

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The list you refer to are the system names showcased in the load screen. They are made up names like Tweretnort and Snatreetze, generated in the same way as all galaxy, system, and planet names in this game.

I assume they included a bunch of fixed names for the load screen, so they could remove all offensive or questionable sounding ones. :wink:

Real life galaxies rarely have names (like Sombrero, Whirlpool, Andromeda), most of them are catalogued under names like “NGC 123” or “Messier 456” — you can tell the difference.

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Thank you everyone. The thing I found odd was that every name was on that list that was in the topic I I had actually posted in as it was the only match I got in an internet search. And I was trying to check because I had thought they should have been the catalogued names if actual pulled listing.

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I’ll link to the list in the Atlas Rises topic for anyone who wishes to have a look again. It has 750 entries all in a JSON file which hasn’t seen any changes since. The loading scene will always pull system names from that specific list only. I am pretty sure they used the same procgen for in-game system names to create these, but as said, likely wanted to make sure no oddities occured and making the list long enough to not notice the repetition too much.

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Welcome to the forum @Mistake. I just wish I could pronounce the names. :laughing: Maybe they make sense in another language. Like Abernagnezhra spoken on planet Kivlotoxmn in the Sdhermaca galaxy. But maybe I’m wrong. :grinning: