Name that planet... in Chinese

[TechBear_Seattle]

I was going to ask this in the Science forum, but it seemed a tad too off topic.

I am working on a science fiction universe set about 300 years in the future. (If the gods of writing favor me, I will be published before then.) I have two extrasolar worlds that have status as full, independent colony worlds. One is Aurora, named in fact and in story for the first of the Spacer worlds in Isaac Asimov's "Robot" novels. The second one was settled mainly by Chinese and Indian colonists, and I want it to have a Chinese name.

The working name has been Dì Pú (Chinese: 地朴 ), which I believe could be translated as "world of uncut wood." The character pú literally means "uncut wood" and is a Taoist concept of "potentiality" and "being without preconceptions." One of my friends like Dì Mín (Chinese: 地旻 ), "world of heaven."

Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter? I would really like to hear from a science fiction buff who is familiar with Chinese.

And on a related note: What about the name Tài Yáng Zhàn (Chinese: 太阳站 ) which I think would translate as "Great Sun Station" for one of the major transportation hubs between Sol system and other stars?

Edited to remove auto-generated smiley faces.

[mzteris]

1. My friend is a

Ancient Chinese scholar (the Chinese is old, not him! :) ) - I'll ask him if he has any thoughts on the matter.

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. I would greatly appreciate your friend's input

Thanks!

[HappyCynic]

3. Too late for a suggestion?

I don't know if the post is too late but how about youxuan ( 幽玄 ) ?
It's used a lot in Japanese aesthetics (jp: yugen). It's one of those words that can't really be directly translated. Its meaning is roughly "subtle profundity", formed of the words for faint/dim and dark/mystery.


Here's a snippet of an entry from this site http://www.aisf.or.jp/~jaanus/deta/y/yuugen.htm

Lit. profound mystery. A multivalent and influential medieval aesthetic ideal expressing darkness, depth, mystery, transience, ambiguity, calm, sadness, and elegance. The term originated in China as youxuan and meant Daoist or Buddhist truth beyond intellectual comprehension.


From the wiki page on Japanese aesthetics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics), it can be taken to mean "a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… and the sad beauty of human suffering".