The word marklar stems from an alien race named the Marklars, which appeared in an episode of the animated series South Park. The Marklars use the word marklar as a generic word, similar to a pronoun, that can refer with specificity to any thing, place, person, idea, concept, or otherwise represent the meaning of any noun, including proper nouns. (A technique previously used -- to a lesser extent -- by the Smurfs.) All Marklars are named Marklar, and everything on the planet Marklar (or the "marklar Marklar," if you will) is also called Marklar. For some unknown reason, this serves as no problem for the aliens of this planet; just as humans are able to understand homophones based on context, the Marklars seem to understand their language fine. This is demonstrated when the speaking Marklar, Marklar, simply said, "Marklar," and one particular Marklar stepped out of the crowd, knowing somehow he was the one being referenced.

Marklar is not used as a conjunction or article, nor is it normally used in the place of a pronoun, although pronouns may reference marklar. Unlike a pronoun, the referenced word need not appear in the same sentence, nor even ever have been used by the speaker at any time. The plural form is marklars.

On being welcomed to the planet, Marklar the leader of the Marklars say:

"Greetings Marklar! I am Marklar! This is Marklar"

Other examples:

"You see, young marklar. Those marklars don't care about marklar marklar. They just want to take your marklar and marklar their own marklar. The only marklar for this is to marklar."

Or:

Kyle: "Marklar, these marklars want to change your marklar. They don't want this Marklar or any of his marklars to live here because it's bad for their marklar. They use Marklar to try and force marklars to believe their marklar. If you let them stay here, they will build marklars and marklars. They will take all your marklars and replace them with Marklar. These marklars have no good marklar to live on, so they must come here to Marklar. Please, let these marklars stay where they can grow and prosper without any marklars, marklars, or marklars."

Physically, the Marklar species is similar to humans, but with orangish skin, large, bald heads and somewhat large hands. They seem to be a fairly kind race, in that they allowed the starving Ethiopians to move to their planet. They are seen briefly in another episode, "The Red Badge of Gayness," and were mentioned in the episode "Cancelled," where it was revealed that they hate another species of aliens, the Gelgameks, from the episode "Red Hot Catholic Love."

Marklar was also rumored to be the codename for a 2002 project at Apple Computer to run Mac OS X on x86 PCs. When IBM produced the G5, however, it became clear that Apple did not intend to run their OS on a non-PowerPC architecture anytime soon.