Humanis Rex!
Before I used the title "Humanis Rex" publicly, I did a search on the Internet if someone had already thought of it and I was glad that I found no results as yet. This is SOP for me on any title or character I come up with.
I came up with the title as I was trying to think of something that would mean the victory of mankind against all kinds of diversity, and in this story, it's victory against an alien invader. I may be giving out the plot but hey, in any alien invasion story, the humans almost always win, right? I won't even try to be coy about it. It's the journey towards that end that's the challenge for me.
I suddenly thought of "Imperious Rex!", Namor the Submariner's battle cry, and I thought it sounded pretty cool. Maybe I could modify it to suit my own title. As far as I know, "rex" means king. I wanted a word that means humanity and in latin, it's "clementia".
"Clementia Rex!"? hmm... UGH.
"Man" is "compleo" or "vir".
"Compleo Rex!" er... "Vir Rex!"
Ugh. UGH!! Now it starts to get really painful. This went on for quite a while until I accepted that it's useless so I just gave up and went ahead and invented a latin sounding word that seems to evoke humanity: HUMANIS.
I just came up with it. I don't know if there is such a word. It sounds latin, but it isn't. I've already been accused of bad latin in the title, but hey, it really isn't. It's just something I bullshitted.
So "HUMANIS REX!" it is!
I thought wow, that sounds a bit cool. And like I said earlier, I checked if there is such a phrase anywhere, and amazingly enough, there wasn't. Great!
I came up with the title as early as August 2003 in correspondences with Budjette Tan when I was looking for means by which I could release the story.
Now I'm just digging up all this now to put this all on record, so as I won't be accused of ripping off someone else. Because I'm starting to see other people use "Humanis Rex" outside the context of my story. I've seen it used as the name of a ship in some gaming forum.
It's all possible that this fella thought this up independently, but seeing as this first came out several months after the publication of the first installment of Humanis Rex in FUDGE Magazine and the publication of the Humanis Rex! blog on the Internet, you would think that he would have at least made a cursory search online if someone had already come up with the title.
