-ian
It's hard to find a science fiction story that doesn't involve an alien species whose name ends in "-ian". But why is this such a common suffix to use? And where's the creativity?
I remember my parents showing me an old black-and-white sitcom called "My Favorite Martian". In fact, there are many TV shows and films out there that explore the prospect of Mars housing life and calling those alien organisms "Martians".
Perhaps the tendency to use "-ian" at the end of every alien race name stems from these various works, but why "Martian"? Humans are inhabitants of Earth, but we don't call ourselves "Earthians". Furthermore, if we were to apply the same logic, wouldn't that mean every organism on Mars would be a Martian? And, by extension, wouldn't that mean every animal on Earth would be Earthian? After all, if we're going to generalize the name of every species on a planet based on the name of the planet itself, then everything born on Mars is a Martian, and everything born on Earth is Earthian, right?
It might be worth pointing out that not every alien organism ends with the "-ian" suffix. Sometimes it's just "-an" (e.g. Romulan or Vulcan). Is that just standard nomenclature in the English language? Everything that doesn't originate on Earth gets the "-ian" suffix? Actually, that doesn't work either, because what do you call someone from Russia? Russian, right? Are Russians aliens? Or maybe Australians are aliens? Last I checked, the answer to both of those suppositions is "no". In fact, many nationalities don't follow this same logic. People in France are not Francians, people in Japan are not Japanians, and people in Niger are not Nigerians (there's a fun ambiguity!).
Why is it that we have to give every alien race the "-ian" or "-an" suffix when we don't even do that with our own people? Also, how is it no one else has gotten tired of this naming convention being overused? Maybe I'm just too much of a nerd (I'm "nerdian", right? ;-)
Granted, there are some sci-fi stories and franchises out there that have deviated from this norm, but they introduce another mildly annoying redundancy. Anything that doesn't end in "-ian" has to have the word "the" in front of it, and, once again, this is not something we do for our own Earth-born organisms.
Some examples of this immediately come to mind, both from the Star Trek series. "The Sheliak", "The Zal", and "The Krenim". Again, why do we do this for alien races? We don't refer to dogs as "The Dog" or "The Canine" or even "The Caninus". Although, we do sort of do this for nationalities that don't end in "-ian" (just like we do for our sci-fi stuff!). For example, "French" does not end in "-ian", but the people of France, as a whole, are often referred to as "The French".
Fortunately, there is one sci-fi franchise that has gone against all of these naming conventions, and that is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Sure, some of the alien races have this "-ian" suffix, but that's mostly because the series used the existing lore. If you look at the new species introduced by the series, they don't have the "-ian" suffix or the "the" prefix either (Vorta, Jem'Hadar, Founder, etc.). Not only that, but the character and culture of these new races are heavily built up, and that gives everything more weight. If there are any prospective sci-fi writers out there looking to create a story involving alien races, please do me a favor and do your best to emulate Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's approach to crafting alien races.
Unfortunately, it seems that most modern day sci-fi stories seem to be adding to the already long list of "-ian" aliens. All I'm asking is that we try deviating from a 50-year-old+ standard and get some creativity if we can.