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Noonien Soong

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Dr. Noonien Soong is a cyberneticist who lived on the colony Omicron Theta for several years, where he created six androids with positronic brains, the last two being Lore and Data.

In 2328, Dr. Soong married Dr. Juliana O'Donnell, also a cyberneticist, who died during the Crystalline Entity attack on the colony, but most of her memories remain inside an android created by Dr. Soong.

Although Dr. Noonien Soong's ancestry is not explicitly stated in the cannon, it is highly likely East Asian, either Chinese or Korean. Soong is a popular Chinese surname (宋 in pinyin: Sòng , Wade-Giles: Sung) and Korean surname (송 in revised[?] romanisation: Song), in both of which, the vowel o are pronounced similar to oh and not on. The Chinese surname is often Romanized as Soong as well, for example, the Soong Sisters (including Madame Soong May-ling) and James Soong of the Republic of China.

The given name Noonien is open to a wider interpretation. But if Chinese, Noonien can be a variant Romanization of Nunian (努念 "diligently remembering") or Nuning (努寧 "striving tranquility"), where u is pronounced like oo not but; if Korean, Nun'nin or Nun'yen.

He died on stardate 44085.7 on Terlina III, where he built his last laboratory.

Some of the O'Donnell android's memories were fragmentary, such as the death of Dr. Soong and her creation as an android. Dr. O'Donnel later remarried to Dr. Pran Tainer of Atrea IV, where Data discovered that O'Donnel is his creation mother (since Data's memories were erased during the Crystalline Entity attack).

wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump