Stephen Hawkins, The Dalai Lama, Ronald McDonald: Some of the many who are recognisable as much for their looks as what they represent.

The antonym (if one can say so) of the aforementioned trio must, then, be this man. Undestinguished in all aspects, except for his name: Marc Okrand; unknown by all but the few who have painstakingly mastered his gift to humanity: Klingon.

Yes, this is the man who created tlhIngan Hol, and wrote the dictionary, along with other noteable works such as The Klingon Way (with Klingon sayings and proverbs), Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, and the two audio productions, Conversational Klingon and Power Klingon.

Really.

So, surfing to The Klingon Language Institute, I find that in the seven years of its existence, the site has got 2,000,000 hits, which works out to (looks for calculator function, but gives up) a lot of hits per day.

It could easily be the new Esperanto, apart from the fact that seldom used words like “table” and “nappy” simply do not exist. This was undoubtedtebly a bit of a hindrance for D’Armond Spears and his wife, who tried to raise their child with both English and Klingon.

Still, at least those who have made the effort can smugly use Google in Klingon.