Any Chinese Speakers, or people in the know about the Shenzhou? I saw a long time ago, speculation that it was named after the Chinese spaceship that operated circa 2003, and meant "a ship of the gods" or something like 'a god's boat', from the characters 神舟. I'm watching the show in Korean, since I'm residing in Korea, and those characters, in Korean, are read/written phonetically as 신주, Shinju. However, in the Korean subtitles, which quite often will just phonetically spell out Chinese names on other American shows, chose to write "선조" for the ships name, which instantly is the word for "ancestors" in Korean, and comes from the Chinese roots 先祖.

Either makes sense, but I wouldn't be posting if I didn't think it very interesting that a ship named "先祖" (ancestors/forefathers/prior lineage) encounters a Klingon Sarcophagus ship. It also works as the ship the show starts on, in media res of Michael's service on board, after 7 years. As in its the ship that represents her (now) former life as a starfleet first officer, which is a prior life now that she's a prisoner for life (or a week, till next episode). Thoughts?

to summarize - Netflix Korea, that usually just uses Korea's phonetic alphabet to write names phonetically, instead looked up the Chinese characters for the Shenzhou and wrote their Korean readings, Seonjo, 先祖, ancestor, rather than Shinju, 先祖, ship of the/a gods. Wondering if any Chinese speakers could verify that both are read(pronounced) Shenzhou in Chinese, and what they think on it? I cant think of another reason why a netflix korea subtitler wouldn't have just taken the low hanging option of *just phonetically writing shenzhou unless they were given the chinese characters to work with. Even searching on a Korean web search pulls up that the Shenzhou was a Chinese spacecraft immediately...