Data's Name Led To Gene Roddenberry Creating A New Star Trek Rule

There is a notable scene in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "The Child" wherein Dr. Pulaski (Diana Muldaur) mispronounces Data's name. Data (Brent Spiner) tells her that his name is pronounced "Day-tah" and not "Dah-tah" as she presumed. Pulaski is a little miffed by being corrected, as she thinks very lowly of the android. What's the difference?, she asks. Data plainly says, "One is my name. The other is not." 

Over the course of multiple episodes, Pulaski eventually learned to respect Data, and always pronounced his name correctly after the end of that conversation. One can see, however, how Pulaski would be confused, as she perhaps only read Data's name on ship manifests. Also, Data was (in a corny, sci-fi way) named after units of information. He could have easily been named Stan or Toshiro or Ahmed or Macaulay, but Gene Roddenberry named him Data, highlighting the character's computerized nature. It turns out, though, Roddenberry himself hadn't specified if the character's name was pronounced "Day-tah" or "Dah-tah" yet. 

It turns out there's a behind-the-scenes reason for the pronunciation of Data's name. Back in 2019, Spiner spoke at a sci-fi convention called Big Apple Comic Con, and answered questions from the audience. He told a story of the time when he and his fellow "Star Trek" cast members met in a Hollywood hotel to perform the show's very first table-read. It was for the pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint." Spiner sat near his co-star, Patrick Stewart, a classically trained British actor who had been hired to play Captain Picard. It seems that Stewart pronounced Data's name in a way Spiner didn't expect, leading Roddenberry himself to chime in with a new "Star Trek" rule. It seems that whichever actor spoke a sci-fi proper noun first got to choose its pronunciation. 

Some Trekkies have seen Pulaski's above-mentioned faux-pas as the height of rudeness. Some have never forgiven Pulaksi, almost 40 years later. It's perhaps ironic to learn, then, that Spiner once assumed that Data's name was pronounced "Dah-tah." It was Patrick Stewart who first "officially" called him "Day-tah." 

As Spiner tells it, the first table read of the "Next Generation" pilot was an exciting occasion. Not only was the whole cast meeting for the first time, but the show's biggest producers were all there as well, including Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Bob Justman. "It was like really kind of cool," he said. He continued: 

"We start reading the script, and Patrick says 'Day-tah.' And I was like, 'woah, woah, wait a minute.' And I looked at Gene, and I said 'Is the character Day-tah or Dah-tah?' Because when I read the script, I thought it was Dah-tah. And he said 'Well, I'm going to make a new rule right here. Whoever says the name first, that's the pronunciation.' And that's the way it went the entire series. Whoever said any one of the alien beings, whoever said it first, that was the way it was pronounced. And no one ever said, 'Wait, why don't you call it...?' 'No, no. I said it first.'"

Roddenberry, of course, could easily have dictated the pronunciation. He created the character, after all, and also co-authored the "Encounter at Farpoint" script with D.C. Fontana. It was diplomatic of him to allow the actors to choose, however, as it would let the alien named flow more naturally and comfortably. It would also cut down on weird inconsistencies as previously seen on "Star Trek" (as when Orions were alternately called "O-RYE-ons" and "OH-ree-ons"). 

Spiner even posited that the more popular American pronunciation of "data" was altered by Stewart's use of the word. We have him to thank for the evolution of the word.