The "What's a good name for this?" thread

@Marq FJA: It's not terribly snappy. To go from The Other Wiki page, might I suggest 'Toumai Armed Services', named after a particular example of Sahelanthropus? Extra irony point because it means "Hope of Life". Also Inc. is short for Incorporated, while Corp. is short for Corporation, I'd pick one or the other.

@Lightning Lancer: Ornstein apparently is a Jewish name, and apparently a Hebrew name meaning 'brave' is Amos - Amos Ornstein?

Maybe Ariel Ornstein? Ariel is a Hebrew name and was originally (and still is in many places, among them Israel) a male name, and means "lion of God", which fits his position.

edited 25th Oct '16 4:10:53 AM by EternaMemoria

You may be on to something with "Toumai". As for "Incorporated" vs. "Corporation"... It's not unknown for a real-life acronym to seemingly violate common sense like the way I did.

Perhaps? People might mistake it to mean he'said transgendered, when he is certainly not. Or perhaps I'm over thinking too much.

x 3: Maybe Amo?

edited 24th Oct '16 9:41:38 AM by LightningLancer

I do think you are overthinking it. I don't think a name alone, one which many already know is basically gender-neutral, will make people take that conclusion unless they already had the idea in their heads

In Shadowrun, scientists in the post-Awakening world found that (meta)human genetics is a lot more complex than they thought when they discovered the existence of "astral shadows" to physical DNA structures, which are responsible for the emergence of the metahuman races as well as other things related to the Awakening.

The concept of metaphysical equivalents to genes has considerable utility for a variety of story ideas, but I'm stumped when I try to come up with a scientific-sounding alternative name (which is particularly important for non-fantasy settings). Can you guys help me?

Something related to memory or writing is your best bet, I say. That is in many ways what DNA is, compared to other biological substances: a flexible and relatively durable medium for storing information and replicating it.

Hmmm... The only thing that seems viable to me is "mneme" (pronounced "neem"; deriving from Greek μνήμη), though it has the drawback of having already been coined as a term (and pronounced "neemee") by Richard Semon to refer to "memory of an external-to-internal experience", although it seems the term is not widely used and instead "engram" (also used by Semon, and something that I've encountered many times before) is more prevalent. Maybe I should write it as "mnemɇ" to represent the silent e?

BTW, I've isolated the Shadowrun sourcebook text that elaborates on the topic of "astral shadows" (screenshot). Basically, imagine genes as the 3-dimensional physical manifestation of these metaphysical gene-like entities, like how a cube is considered the 3-dimensional "shadow" of the 4-dimensional tesseract.

edited 25th Oct '16 1:47:21 AM by MarqFJA

Technically, genes can't be said to have dimensions, because they are information. I think you mean nucleotide sequences.

EDIT: Wait, ignore what is written above. It is completely OK to call a nucleotide sequence that stores information for a particular protein a "gene".

Now, if you wish a name for the astral structure that stores genetic information, I think you should clarify more about that: do you wish a name for the material, the base units for the information stored or the base (pseudo)chemical units of the material, which are the base units for mutation?

edited 25th Oct '16 4:09:21 AM by EternaMemoria

The "material" would be the equivalent of DNA, right? I wouldn't mind suggestions for a name for that, of course, but it's not a priority.

That leaves us with "the base units for the information stored" (which I'm not sure if it's simply an elaboration on "the material" or actually a separate option) and "the base (pseudo)chemical units of the material, which are the base units for mutation". It seems to me that it's the last one that I want, as it sounds the closest to what a gene is ("a locus (or region) of DNA which is made up of nucleotides and is the molecular unit of heredity").

Oh, and new question, which I hope would be simple to answer. I have a made-up alien species (henceforth denoted as "Xtian"^note From "Extraterretrial", pronounced "Eks-tee-an". for convenience) that goes through a somewhat complex life cycle comprising of the following stages: egg/embryo ^note The species can switch between live birth and egg-laying modes more or less at will, larva, pupa, nymph^note An Xtian larva pupates into a nymph rather than a (sub)imago, unlike known real-life animals with metaphorphosis-based development, where larva and nymph are mutually exclusive stages., subimago, imago, and supraimago^note This Xtian life stage requires a specific set of circumstances to reach, part of which is age and the rest of which are environmental factors involving specific pheromonal stimuli from conspecifics. Basically, it's a "better in every way" version of the imago, which in turn is equivalent to adulthood in real-life animals..

Would it be accurate to describe these life stages in the following way?

• Larva = infant
• Nymph = child
• Subimago = adolescent / subadult
• Larva + nymph + subimago = juvenile
• Imago = adult
• Supraimago = postadult / superadult / hyperadult / met(a-)adult

edited 25th Oct '16 6:47:08 AM by MarqFJA

@Marq FJA

When I speak about the substance or medium, I am indeed talking about DNA. I think the other parts nerit a little more exposition.

The base chemical units are nucleotides, and the base units that contain information are codons, triads of nucleotides. Each codon can either be a signal for a aminoacid that is part of a protein(not exactly, as DNA is the database and the signals are in RNA trascripted from it, but I digress) or a "stop codon", which marks the end of a protein.

A gene can either mean the inheritable information itself or a locus in a DNA molecule that contains information to synthetise a protein. Proteins are responsible, either directly or indirectly, for all biological processes, and are the most functionally diverse biological macromolecules.

There are also sites that reoeat themselves to make large-scale transcription easier and large areas of non-transcripted DNA in the genome, which can be either ancient deactivated viral genes, "decoy" spaces that serve as protection against viruses, evolutionary artifacts or just "buffers" that make genes stay further apart to make transcription easier. I think it would be complicated to translate those to Astral DNA.

To make things easier to understand, I will use a metaphor: imagine your cells use a language for storing recipes for proteins. In this language:

• A gene is a phrase.
• The genome is the book.
• Each word has exactly 3 letters, no more no less.
• Each nucleotide is a letter.
• Each word is a codon, which us translated into an aminoacid.
• Aminoacids are the building bricks of proteins.
• Any extra letters "push" the others ahead
• Any removed letters "pulls" all that come after
• If the last word ends up lacking letters, pretend it isn't there.

A mutation occurs when a letter is added, removed or replaced. The first two can damage larger parts of the sequence due to the "pushing" and "pulling" turning something like "eat hot dogs here" into "ath otd ogsh ere", and in theory even changing multiple genes dependimg on exactly where they hit, but switching a single letter can change an aminoacid and impair a protein's fuction as well.

edited 25th Oct '16 7:40:58 AM by EternaMemoria

OK, then using your metaphor, it's a name for the phrases (and, by proxy, the book^note "Genome" is derived from "gene", after all.) that I'm looking for.

edited 25th Oct '16 9:13:58 AM by MarqFJA

I see. I am no expert on greek or latim, but what about "verses" for the genes and "poem" for the genome?

It may not sound particularly scientific, but giving what you discovered nice names and wrapping them in a beautiful image makes it easier to sell your theory, and unlike some people think scientists are not opposed to being artistic.

Not that I think those would be the official names, but they could be the most used ones due to taking over the public mind.

Those might be viable candidates if the story was an Science Fantasy one like Shadowrun, where magic has an actual scientific discipline for studying it (no, seriously; MIT even became "MIT&T upon including a dedicated department for that field"). What about names for use in pure science fiction, or even "technically/possibly Science Fantasy, but it's very light to the point of extreme subtlety on the fantasy side"?

edited 25th Oct '16 9:37:40 AM by MarqFJA

What would be a good name for an Ancient Conspiracy that involves prophecies and dealing with the fate of the world?

hey, what would be some good names for a spirit of the sky, a spirit of the earth, and a spirit of the sea (note: they must have something to do with the southeastern native american language possibly cherokee or uchee)

Any idea what these spirits look like? From what I can see, Cherokee spirits tend to have quite physically descriptive names.

Edit: With any luck there'll be an actual Cherokee troper on here to confirm, but the slightly sketchy looking dictionary I found gives the following translations (using the Roman alphabet):

• Sky -> galvladi
• Earth -> elohi
• Sea -> amequohi

edited 26th Oct '16 9:08:11 AM by Ulysses21

aw thanks.

edit: oh wait sorry about that. but seriously are they're any native tropers here?

edited 26th Oct '16 11:55:30 AM by ewolf2015

One of my characters has a Pretentious Latin Motto that's both her motto and her battle cry, that translates into something along the lines of "I will not be defeated."

Unfortunately, I'm not finding any common phrases that meet what I'm looking for, and I'm not well versed enough in Latin to come up with something grammatically accurate. Any suggestions?

i need a replacement name for both fanu and sayra since someone one told me it came off as lazy. i tried anagrams but it didn't work for me and maybe some other methods but it still didn't. so i really need some names for them.

I think they sound fine, kind of Legend of Zelda-esque. What are those names for? Are they names for characters, places, objects...?

lemme explain, they're anagrams for faun and satyr basically.

Does "Numen" (plural: Numina) sound like a good name for a race of spiritual beings that need to be bonded to living beings whom they'd serve as Guardian Entities?

edited 31st Oct '16 4:06:24 PM by MarqFJA

It sounds to me like you're just looking for some fantastical-sounding names. Why not try some uncommon nature-themed names, since fauns and satyrs are frequently associated with forests and such? Here's some 20000-names lists themed around insects, flowers, and nature to get you started. 20000-names is convenient for occasions like this.

What name for a tiny furry animal that looks like a chipmunk-fox and it must start with the letter X.