[Dark RevenantX]

You have to conceptualize Ancient culture first before you can give them an official name.  The name you use in the campaign, though, completely depends on who is saying it.  The Ancients themselves would probably use their real name, while the Vasudans would probably have something slightly different.  The Terrans would just assign a name to them depending on what they observe of them (example is the Shivans, named after Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction).

[Colonol Dekker]

ASW worked it well.



If you want to name them though, refer to Minoan mythology for a few names.

[headdie]

Right, but they wouldn't have called the planet Altair, now would've they?

Maybe not, we're humans and we don't call our planet humee.

More importantly, Altair is an abbreviation of an Arabic word, and the Ancients clearly didn't speak Arabic.

I think "The Race" might be a decent term. Gives a slight sense of Aryanesque racial superiority.

ultimately is assumes Altair is the home world, all that is known in cannon is that Altair hosted the Ancients at some point and recoverable technology was found. Bosh found artifacts in Deneb and possibly other systems

[Dragon]

I think that Ancients should be called "The Great Empire", or something like that.

[Mongoose]

ultimately is assumes Altair is the home world, all that is known in cannon is that Altair hosted the Ancients at some point and recoverable technology was found. Bosh found artifacts in Deneb and possibly other systems

Yeah, there's no canon evidence given that Altair was the Ancients' original homeworld.  I think it's more likely that it's one of multiple colony worlds that the Ancients fled to during the final days of their annihilation at the hands of the Shivans.

[Colonol Dekker]

It doesn't even specify in canon if teh ancients are native to our galaxy.

[Mongoose]

I think it's a safe bet that they were.  The "gave us the universe" sentiment came only after the Ancients had already expanded out from their homeworld, and after the Shivans started putting the smackdown on them, they retreated back toward their core systems.  Since we found their records on Altair, that implies that the Ancient homeworld was somewhere in our neck of the woods.

[Scotty]

We have no way of knowing just how far they spread before being beaten back.  The only thing the ruins on Altair prove is that the Ancients lived on Altair at some point in their existance.  Nothing else.

[Nuclear1]

ultimately is assumes Altair is the home world, all that is known in cannon is that Altair hosted the Ancients at some point and recoverable technology was found. Bosh found artifacts in Deneb and possibly other systems

Yeah, there's no canon evidence given that Altair was the Ancients' original homeworld.  I think it's more likely that it's one of multiple colony worlds that the Ancients fled to during the final days of their annihilation at the hands of the Shivans.

What he said. 

I much better like the idea that Altair wasn't the homeworld.  There's such a vast galaxy out there that I don't particularly entertain the idea that our sector was so damn crowded.

[Mongoose]

We have no way of knowing just how far they spread before being beaten back.  The only thing the ruins on Altair prove is that the Ancients lived on Altair at some point in their existance.  Nothing else.

While that is indeed true, the cutscene monologues state that the Ancients retreated all the way back to their original homeworld in the face of the Shivan onslaught against them, and that it was there that the Shivans finally obliterated them.  (The ASW team pulled off a nice bit of parallelism with this, if you haven't yet played it.)  The final monologue, the one presumably made on Altair, mentions that "there are only a few of us left now," which would suggest it being made after the destruction of the homeworld.  All of this seems to strongly suggest that the Ancients on Altair were refugees from the destruction of their homeworld, which would presumably place said homeworld somewhere relatively close by.

Like I said above, I don't see Altair as being the Ancients' original homeworld.  But I do think it was in the same general area as what would eventually become GTVA space.  It ties in with the idea of the Shivans as "Great Preservers" that allowed Terran and Vasudan civilization to eventually arise (and with the concept of the Vasudans having known of the Ancients in their own distant past), and it fits with the geography of the two known Knossos portals, through which the Shivans presumably came at some point in the past.  It may all be speculation on my part, but I think it's supported by a decent amount of evidence from the games.

[Darius]

I'll second the Race and Home usage. It worked to great effect for Harry Turtledove's World War series, which also had a species convinced of their supremacy and mastery, and avoids having to think up an actual, feasible-sounding name for them.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

That is basically what ASW does now; only in the tech description they refer to themselves as "Ancients" IIRC.
And in the ship designations. But "RCa Akrotiri" (Race's carrier") ? Please.

[GoulMeister]

my theory is that the ancients came from earth, atlantis was their capitol and the shivans caused the last ice age.

[Colonol Dekker]

It would explain the dinosaurs. . . . But what about the crocodiles?
 
And the french?

[MatthTheGeek]

Oh no... What again about the French ?

[Thaeris]

Don't pass the French off so readily... those Normans aren't to be trifled with! 

[GoulMeister]

They used their special beam absorbing cheese to survive the lucifer

[Bob-san]

I would have to agree with them calling themselves The Great Ones or The Race; the monologue reveals that they were extremely arrogant and tyrannical in their actions following the discovery allowing them to traverse subspace. I'd assume that the Vasudans don't call themselves Vasudans in their own native tongue, just as they don't call us Humans or call our planet Earth. From my understanding, their Vasuda is their way of saying "Home" or "Land" or "Desert" OR Vasuda is the way we identified their solar system and thus tacked the name "Vasudan" onto their entire race.

Then again, the fact that humans were able to get the ETAK translator working goes to say that the Ancients, while perhaps they never figured out how to communicate, WOULD have the ability to communicate with races they've prior had contact with (ie: Vasudans and possibly Terrans)

Could go either way, really. What's curious to me is why the Ancients never reformed, unless is trying to say that thousands of year before, the Ancients are the "missing link" or are already humans (having taken refuge here and collapsed the jump node to prevent further Shivan or alien interference--a possible reason that we're located so close to the assumed Ancient empire and yet don't have a real memory of the Vasudans or other conquest.

Interesting to extrapolate based off the FS storyline. Remember that the evidence would be here-say--you can't ask someone what they were thinking or doing 8000 years before, and I think it'd be possible for the Ancients to be warring for hundreds or thousands of years and losing system after system to the Shivans. Perhaps losing one system a decade at the start with a defining even being the loss of a core system every hundred years. Assuming that the Ancients had a strong economy and threw enough ships at the Shivans to slow their conquest, they'd be forced into fighting a slow and costly war for survival outlasting many generations. Splinters of their empire could form each time they lost a major system. Assuming that ships like the Lucifer were prevalent and that the Ancients were able to stall the Shivans, I'd guess that the Ancients have at least reasonably powerful weapons capable of damaging a ship like the Lucifer, but perhaps not destroying it. Or perhaps destroying it, and having the Shivans step up their game to create the Sathanas taskforce with the ability to destroy stars instead of planets. It could explain why the Lucifer would appear from a different direction (perhaps having spent hundreds or thousands of years regrowing itself, assuming the ships are organic) and why there was then the entire Sathanas force that came to bear.

[Lucika]

Just call them "us". And EVERY OTHER RACE "them". Hell, it'll give a sense of confusion, something that is necessary when you're talking about Ancients. Plus, it fits their behaviour well.

[S-99]

I was trying to think of an easier solution. The only thing i came up with is that using a minoan word for referring to them sounds like an option. A minoan word for conqueror, devastator or even demon sounds appropriate for a name for their species and their civilization based on how many species they wiped out and how far they're empire reached.

It obviously wouldn't be there true name, but it'd do. The ancients referring to themselves as the ancients is still inane, and for the ancient shivan war that it might not be an excuse, but this is an issue that people keep taking baby steps around. The great ancient empire just doesn't do it, it's too empty of a title for even an empire. For someone referring to an empire it must have a name to go with that empire instead of a noun. The great roman empire, united states of america, chinese communist empire. These are just examples of something other than a noun for referring to an empire; it's better than ancients and the almighty power "race".

Names have meaning and give power, and a noun can enhance it.