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Trope-a-Day: Meaningful Name

Alistair Young

Apr 15, 2016

Meaningful Name: What attributive names are supposed to be, both the self-chosen and the awarded, and what a lot of the subsidiary components of a full name are: persona, patronymic, matronymic, locative, generation, clade, mindstyle, associations, etc. (See also: Luke Nounverber, Names to Run Away From Really Fast (upcoming), Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom (also upcoming), Overly Long Name). Also seen, at least part of the time, in the naming conventions for ships, habitats, cities…

trope-a-day, name, attributive name

← Mass | Normality →

Trope: Names to Run Away From Really Fast

(Okay, so I found one more…) Names to Run Away From Really Fast: In the Imperial context alone, Imperial Hand, Fifth Directorate, and any Imperial military officer, agent, or private contractor whose House name is “Sargas” are the chief contenders. In the Worlds as a whole, Operatives of the Conclave

Trope-a-Day: Nom de Guerre

Nom de Guerre: Played straight with attributive names (see: Overly Long Name), with particular reference to the use of a field-name and/or a foe-name, which are literal noms de guerre.

Flexibility

“Look here. You know there are a more than a few species out there whose names we can’t hope to pronounce, even if you only count the ones that use vocal language. Such as all the amorphoids, whose vocal organs are as arbitrary as the rest of them.” “Like

The Naming of Everything

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be thought remains unthought; if what must be thought is not thought, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, apprehension

The Naming Of Ships Is A Difficult Matter

pennant number: The Imperial Navy’s best attempt at a general purpose identification code for ships, other means having proven inadequate. It is generally held that the true identifier of a ship is its name: that is, after all, what is written upon the hull, and with it travels the

Trope-a-Day: Which Me?

Which Me?: Averted. Since forking is common, Eldraeic has long since adopted proper naming and pronoun conventions to distinguish I-prime from me-secundus and me-tertius, and even me-tertius-beta.

Tropes Going Forward

So why is that a Trope-a-No-Longer-Day, I hear you cry? Well, because I’ve run out of pre-written ones, and the demands on my time these days are such that – especially if I want to keep prioritizing writing at all – I can’t take enough time out to go through

Trope-a-No-Longer-Day: Creepy Cleanliness

Creepy Cleanliness: To more than a few foreign visitors, yes. As William Gibson said in Disneyland With the Death Penalty, “Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore’s airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to

Trope-a-Day: Real Money Trade

Real Money Trade: The problem is that it’s hard to define what qualifies as “real money” versus “game money” when the Mythic Stars MMO alone has an internal economy bigger than some respectably-sized planets. The logical consequences of this apply in full, including the follow-up to the city guards

Trope-a-Day: Living Battery

Living Battery: Given the amount of biotechnology around the place, it should not surprise you that there are, yes, more than a few living batteries. It’s just that they’re all lifeforms specifically created to serve as living batteries – large cultures of Spheroporus electri inside microbial fuel cells, artificial

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