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Add DRAFT naming briefs for Zyphos names

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One brief per DRAFT name from weksa-body/zyphos-name-drafts: speaker,
addressee, register, meaning decomposition, applicable sound rules, and
reject conditions. Records the Sa'auei'a -> Sa'ueia rename state. No names
are canon.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Weksa 2026-11-03 11:39:07 +00:00
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# Zyphos Name Briefs (DRAFT)
**Status: every name in this file is DRAFT. None is canon.** Per the
[README](./README.md), a name is canon only when a language project can explain
its ontology and form. No such project exists yet, so these are candidates held
against briefs, not entries in a lexicon.
Source: follow-up `weksa-body/zyphos-name-drafts`. Brief shape follows
[Language Design Pressure](./language-design.md#naming-brief-shape): the brief
comes before the name, and the name is the receipt. Setting context was read
from the Zyphos vault (`Species/Airawa`, `Species/Matriarch Trees`,
`Species/Sa'ueia`, `Civilizations/*`, `Ecology/Breeding Grounds`,
`Ecology/Nation Scale Interbeings`); the vault was not edited.
Both brief sets wait on Meta's answers to `vq-first-language` and
`vq-name-scope`. Where a brief's scope depends on them it says so.
## What the sound rules actually give us
`language-design.md` is thin, and the briefs should not pretend otherwise.
- **Airawa** has a provisional list (R-A below). It is a tendency list, not a
phonology: no vowel inventory, no photactic limits, no stress rule beyond
"heavy on socially important forms".
- **Sa'ueia has no phonology section at all.** The only rules are negative and
comparative: softer than Airawa, "flow longer and wetter", route names read
smooth, and "avoid making native Airawa names read like smooth Sa'ueia route
names unless the form is explicitly a loan, exonym, or cross-continental
register". Briefs below that cite R-S1..R-S3 are citing that one paragraph.
Accepting or rejecting a Sa'ueia name on sound alone is therefore weak
evidence until someone writes a Sa'ueia sound section.
- The **imperial Airawa register** has no sound rules either. It is only
described as "an artificial quarter-continent clausiform exception imposed
through biological-memetic control", not "named like a normal state with wet
nouns glued on".
Rule labels used below (quoted or paraphrased from `language-design.md`):
| Label | Rule |
| --- | --- |
| R-A1 | Airawa: dorsal and coronal plosives prominent (`k g q t d`). |
| R-A2 | Airawa: sibilants and postalveolars carry social texture (`s z sh zh`). |
| R-A3 | Airawa: `r` may be trilled in some registers. |
| R-A4 | Airawa: clipped or closed syllables tolerated, where Sa'ueia would flow longer and wetter. |
| R-A5 | Native Airawa names must not read like smooth Sa'ueia route names unless explicitly loan, exonym or cross-continental register. |
| R-A6 | Room consensus: hard edges, clipped/closed syllables, heavy stress on socially important forms, so claims land with weight. |
| R-S1 | Sa'ueia is softer than Airawa. |
| R-S2 | Sa'ueia forms flow longer and wetter than Airawa. |
| R-S3 | Sa'ueia route names read smooth. |
| R-N | Naming rule: meaning decomposition first; define the speaker's scale, name type (endonym, exonym, ritual avoidance, technical, imperial administrative, route-name, child-name, trade gloss), what the speaker's ontology makes obligatory, and whether the name is stable, seasonal, situational, inherited or evasive. |
Existing scratch evidence to keep in view: `Druzkai` (Face for a non-imperial
archivist) and the first-contact slice lexicon (`atar`, `qatar`, `daruq`,
`karuq`, `qerath`, `thaleq`...). Neither is canon either.
Each target's brief ends with **reject if** conditions. A name that fails one
goes back to the brief, not to a patch.
---
## Airawa, non-imperial
Common to all Airawa briefs below, unless one overrides it: the speakers are
pre-imperial or never-imperial Airawa, in the `Pre-Imperial Airawa Tribes` /
native nation-scale sense, not the Empire. Registers (Airawa imperial, native
tribal, mother-tree-facing) must not collapse into one naming soup
(`README.md`, Authority).
### A1. Airawa self-name (candidates: `Qazhkar`, `Dozkai`, `Tegzhir`) — DRAFT
```yaml
target:
kind: endonym (what a non-imperial Airawa people call themselves)
canon_source: Species/Airawa; Civilizations/Pre-Imperial Airawa Tribes
provisional_english_handle: "the Airawa, as they name themselves"
namer:
language_project: none yet (non-imperial Airawa, native register)
register: formal naming register (slice: `qatar`, formal name), not casual
relationship_to_target: the speaker is the target
```
- **Speaker:** a non-imperial Airawa speaking as a people, or as a tribe
inside the people (open: see scope question).
- **Addressee:** primarily other Airawa and witnesses at formal naming; second,
an outsider receiving an introduction (the first-contact scene).
- **Register:** formal, standing-bearing; the kind of word that follows `atar`
("I stand as") and has to land with weight (R-A6).
- **Meaning decomposed before surface:**
a self-name here is probably not "people" in the English sense. The setting
makes the unit of selfhood a relationship: a lineage held by a mother tree,
bound by gestation contracts, contract dress and nutrient obligation. The
candidate meaning bundle is: *those held in memory by mother trees* /
*those who owe and are owed* / *kin through the archive*. It must also work
as a contrast with the empire, which edits memory: the pre-imperial self-name
should presuppose negotiated, leaky membership, not a uniform nation.
Scope question (needs `vq-name-scope`): one pan-Airawa word, a per-tribe
word, or a word for the *kind* of polity (nation-scale interbeing, which
includes the trees)?
- **Sound rules that apply:** R-A1, R-A2, R-A4, R-A6; R-A5 as a negative check.
- **Per-candidate sound read (judgment, not rule):**
- `Qazhkar`: `q` + `zh` + `k`, two closed syllables (Qazh-kar), fits R-A1,
R-A2, R-A4, R-A6 cleanly. Shares `-kar` with `sakar` and `kazhar` from the
slice. That is a plus if `-kar` is meant to be a role/person suffix and a
minus if it was only a sound resemblance.
- `Dozkai`: closed first syllable, open second ending in a diphthong `ai`.
Fits R-A1/R-A2 but the open `-ai` tail is the softer shape R-A4 contrasts
against. Also one phoneme away from the scratch name `Druzkai`; two names
with that near neighbourhood will blur unless one is explicitly derived from
the other.
- `Tegzhir`: `t-g-zh` cluster, closed final syllable, clean fit. The only
candidate with a front vowel in the stressed syllable, which may or may not
be a feature.
- **Reject if:**
- the meaning bundle above cannot be stated in one clause that names the
mother-tree relationship (a bare "people" or "the strong" gloss);
- the form also reads as a plausible Sa'ueia word (R-A5);
- it is shared, as a root, with the imperial exonym in A4 without a recorded
reason (loan or deliberate echo);
- the project owner decides the self-name is per-tribe and the word is only
pan-continental.
- **Preferred shape of choice (not a ruling):** pick by the meaning bundle, not
by taste; all three pass the sound list, so sound is not a discriminator here.
### A2. Mother tree (candidates: `Kharzdun`, `Qetoz`) — DRAFT
```yaml
target:
kind: name for a being / kind of being, not a place
canon_source: Species/Matriarch Trees; Ecology/Mother Tree Networks
provisional_english_handle: "mother tree / matriarch tree"
```
- **Speaker:** non-imperial Airawa. Possibly two speakers needing two words:
a tribe naming *its* tree, and a general word for the kind. Open.
- **Addressee:** other Airawa (referring to the tree); *not* the tree itself.
The slice requires distinguishing "direct speech to a mother-tree" from
"authorized delivery to it", so referring and addressing probably want
different forms.
- **Register:** archival / ritual-respectful. Not a diminutive and not a
kinship term.
- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** the English handle "mother" imports
nurture. The vault's tree is a gestator *and* a memory-holder *and* a party
with coercive leverage (memory can be held hostage; defying it costs
ancestral continuity). The Airawa name should carry at least: *keeper of
memory* and *gestation contract*, and should not smuggle in "gentle". Whether
the name also marks the tree as a sovereign party (a polity, since it is a
node in a nation-scale interbeing) is a fork for the owner.
- **Sound rules that apply:** R-A1, R-A2, R-A4, R-A6.
- **Per-candidate sound read:**
- `Kharzdun`: the `kh` is outside the R-A1/R-A2 list (`k g q t d s z sh zh`);
it needs either a rule admitting it or a respelling. Three syllables with
`rz` cluster and final `-dun`: heavy, closed. Strong fit to R-A6 otherwise.
- `Qetoz`: `q` + `t` + `z`, two syllables, fits R-A1/R-A2; the open middle
vowel pattern (`e`, `o`) is lighter than `Kharzdun`. Shorter is arguably
right for a word said often; longer for a word said with weight.
- **Reject if:** the name decomposes only to "mother"/"nurse"/"grandmother"
(kinship nostalgia without the contract and coercion); it is the same word
the empire uses for the tree as *infrastructure* (the Biological Memetic
Engine reuses the tree network, so the empire's word is a different brief);
the project owner rules the kind-word and the individual-tree-word must be
separate and only one is given.
### A3. Disconnected network (candidates: `Gisqat`, `Zhedkor`) — DRAFT
```yaml
target:
kind: name for a surviving mother-tree ecology that severed itself
canon_source: Civilizations/Disconnected Tree Networks
provisional_english_handle: "disconnected (tree) network"
```
- **Speaker:** a native non-imperial Airawa, ideally someone inside or allied
with such a network. **Not the empire**: the empire denies they exist
(`Airawa Empire`, "Nations It Refuses to Recognize"; they are called
"disease, criminal ecology, or imperial tissue awaiting correction"), so the
imperial register has no sanctioned word, and any imperial term is a
separate brief (A4).
- **Addressee:** other native Airawa; possibly a visiting envoy (the vault has
envoys crossing into Sa'ueia territory). Rumor-grade circulation: the networks
"keep rumors moving through routes the engine cannot fully process".
- **Register:** careful. The vault has the status as survival, refusal and
wound at once; the name may need an indirect/evasive form
(`README.md`: "safe-to-name, indirect-name-required, silence-required").
- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** *severed* is the surface fact; the
contentful meaning is *alive because cut*: the connection was surrendered to
preserve the self. A gloss of "isolated" or "cut-off" loses that. Axes to
decide: is the name about the cut (act), the survivor (state), or the
continued resistance (role)? Do networks of "trees with more control than
people" and "anti-imperial Airawa communities" share one word, or does the
word name the property (disconnection) rather than the polity?
- **Sound rules that apply:** R-A1, R-A2, R-A4, R-A6.
- **Per-candidate sound read:**
- `Gisqat`: `g-s-q-t`, two closed syllables; a hard stop sequence that reads
as something cut off, which is apt but also a sound-symbolic gloss the
project should not over-trust.
- `Zhedkor`: `zh-d-k`, trilled `r` available (R-A3); heavy and closed.
- **Reject if:** the form is also the imperial term (the empire's denial means
the two registers should not share one word without cause); it glosses to
"dead", "lost" or "isolated"; the owner decides the target is a *property*
word (adjective for any severed tree) and the candidate is a *noun for the
polity*, or vice versa.
### A4. Imperial exonym for the natives (`Tkarzet`) — DRAFT
```yaml
target:
kind: exonym, imperial administrative
canon_source: Civilizations/Airawa Empire; Conflicts/Xenophobic Memetic Campaign
provisional_english_handle: "the natives / unincorporated Airawa"
namer:
language_project: none (imperial Airawa register)
register: imperial administrative / doctrinal
relationship_to_target: classifier, denier
```
- **Speaker:** the Empire, an artificial nation-scale interbeing speaking
through ministries, doctrine and memetic organisms.
- **Addressee:** imperial citizens and administrators; also doctrine-carrying
memes. Not the natives: it is not a word the natives would be called by to
their faces in a respectful exchange.
- **Register:** official. The language-design rule says this register is
"an artificial quarter-continent clausiform exception", not a normal state's
wet-noun coinage.
- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** the empire's stance is
*non-recognition*: native nations are "disease, criminal ecology, or
imperial tissue awaiting correction"; unification is "biologically
inevitable". So the exonym should classify natives as *not-yet-incorporated
tissue* or *contamination*, not as a people who happen to be foreign. It
should be usable in doctrine and in accusation (dissenters are "infected").
Open: does the word split native Airawa from the disconnected networks (A3)
or is it a single catch-all? The empire denies the networks exist, so the
catch-all risks naming what the doctrine says does not exist.
- **Sound rules that apply:** R-N (exonym). The provisional R-A list governs
*native* Airawa, not the imperial register. There is no imperial phonology
rule yet, so any sound argument for `Tkarzet` is by analogy to R-A1/R-A2.
`Tkarzet` opens with a `tk` cluster that appears nowhere else in the
candidate set or the slice lexicon; it either marks the imperial register as
phonotactically different (good if intended) or is a stray.
- **Reject if:** it is a bare monosyllabic-looking root with no clausal or
administrative structure (the imperial register is clausiform); it is simply
a native word borrowed with harsher spelling (R-A5's reverse: the imperial
word should not accidentally be a native one); it gives the natives a
sovereign-people gloss, contradicting the doctrine; the owner decides the
imperial register needs a distinct sound system and the candidate cannot be
defended against it.
---
## Sa'ueia family-unit and ecological contexts
Common context: the Sa'ueia civilization is mobile, family-unit based
(squad-sized groups doing kinship, craft, diplomacy and oaths together), with
sacred communal breeding grounds and reciprocal ecological partners. A name
earns its place by revealing the ecological deal, reproductive pressure,
memory technology or route consequence (`language-design.md`, design target).
The sound rules available are only R-S1..R-S3 and R-A5; see the caveat above.
### S1. Sa'ueia self-name (candidates: `Ellumaiwa`, `Sauwele`) — DRAFT
```yaml
target:
kind: endonym; family-unit scale, not species scale (open)
canon_source: Species/Sa'ueia; Civilizations/Sa'ueia Family Units
provisional_english_handle: "the Sa'ueia as a family-unit people"
```
- **Speaker:** a Sa'ueia family unit speaking as itself (family-self scale),
possibly on behalf of the wider people.
- **Addressee:** other family units meeting on a route or at a breeding
ground; and ecological partners that keep memory of it (reputation is
held by partners, not only by humans).
- **Register:** family-unit speech, relational and portable; a name that
survives travel and can be re-presented to a partner that remembers you.
- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** the vault makes the family unit the
carrier of standing, and standing is the partners' memory of generosity. So
a self-name probably means something like *those who return and are
recognized as beneficial* / *the traveling reciprocal*, not *the people of a
place*. Scope fork: the continent-scale word "Sa'ueia" already exists in the
vault as the species/continent ethnonym; the candidates may be (a) family-unit
*kind* names, (b) nicknames for the people derived from it, or (c) a
competing ethnonym. This needs `vq-name-scope` before judging.
- **Sound rules that apply:** R-S1, R-S2; R-A5 as a negative check.
- **Per-candidate read (judgment):**
- `Ellumaiwa`: long, open, liquid-heavy (`l`, `m`, `w`); matches R-S1/R-S2
strongly. Four syllables.
- `Sauwele`: short, open vowels and `w`, `l`; matches R-S1/R-S2, but it
begins `Sa-u-` exactly like `Sa'ueia`. Reads as a respelling or derivation
of the existing name rather than an independent self-name.
- **Reject if:** the owner has not decided the target scale; `Sauwele` is
accepted without a recorded derivation from `Sa'ueia` (otherwise it is an
accidental duplicate); either name decomposes to "wolf-like", "pack" or
"nomad" (the vault warns the wolf comparison explains only part of them, and
"nomad" is a camera-angle word); it cannot take a family-specific modifier
when a particular unit needs naming.
### S2. Breeding ground (`Oluneihe`) — DRAFT
```yaml
target:
kind: place-name / commons name, ritual register
canon_source: Ecology/Breeding Grounds
provisional_english_handle: "breeding ground"
```
- **Speaker:** a Sa'ueia family unit returning to a ground; and the ground's
year-round occupants (infants, infirm, caretakers, rotating specialists).
- **Addressee:** other family units, partners that remember them, and the
occupants when arrival is announced.
- **Register:** ritual-communal; the vault gives these as places of
transition, mourning, dispute settlement, medical care and obligation
renewal, so the name has some solemnity.
- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** *commons* is the key axis: it is not
property, not a seat, not a nursery run by an empire. The name should mark a
place that *remains* (occupied all year) while the people circulate, and that
gathers reproduction, care, memory and law. It must distinguish itself from
camp, route and partner site (the Simulation Brief explicitly asks what makes
these visibly different). If the name is a *kind* name, it has to be
generic enough to name every ground; if it names one ground, it needs a
proper-name layer.
- **Sound rules that apply:** R-S1, R-S2, R-S3.
- **Read:** `Oluneihe` is long, liquid, open, ends on the `-ihe` vowel
sequence. Strong fit to R-S1/R-S2. The `-eihe` tail does not resemble `-ia`
of `Sa'ueia`; no collision.
- **Reject if:** it decomposes to "home", "village", "city" or "capital" (the
breeding ground failing as a capital is a stated system failure); it equals
or contains the route word (S3) or the family self-name (S1), which would
merge distinct targets; it is used for a camp.
### S3. Route as obligation (`Ilawerum`) — DRAFT
```yaml
target:
kind: route-name; relation, not geography
canon_source: Themes/Ecological Bargaining; Ecology/Reciprocal Ecologies
provisional_english_handle: "route (as owed relationship)"
```
- **Speaker:** a Sa'ueia family unit that holds or renews a route.
- **Addressee:** other units; the ecological partners (feeding sites, groves,
herds, pollinator corridors) that keep memory of how the unit travelled it.
- **Register:** family-unit speech with some formality: this is a promise-bearing
word. Possibly a seasonal/situational name (a route can open or close
depending on remembered injury).
- **Meaning decomposed before surface:** the key point is that *the route is a
relationship that makes passage available*, not a path on the ground. A unit
may be physically able to travel yet unwelcome (`Family Units`). The word
should mean something like *the standing that lets us pass*; ideally it
distinguishes *the way* from *the debt*. If both senses are one word, the
language is making a commitment about their identity that the vault does
not make.
- **Sound rules that apply:** R-S2, R-S3 (route names read smooth). Also R-A5:
Sa'ueia route names are what Airawa native names must not accidentally
resemble.
- **Read:** `Ilawerum` is smooth through most of the word but ends in `-rum`,
a closed syllable with a nasal coda, which is the one place it trends toward
the clipped shapes the Airawa rule assigns to the other language. Not a
failure by R-S3 (no stated rule against closed syllables in Sa'ueia), but
worth a note: the project should state whether Sa'ueia permits final nasals.
- **Reject if:** it is a plain toponym (no debt sense); it is the same word as
the breeding ground (S2) or shares its stem without a morphological reason;
the owner decides route and obligation are two words and this is only one.
---
## Questions this raises (owners, not decisions)
- **Scope:** one word per ethnonym or per tribe/unit? (`vq-name-scope`.)
- **First language:** Airawa vs imperial Airawa vs Sa'ueia vs a narrow
naming-brief interlingua (`vq-first-language`; `state/map.yaml`). The Airawa
briefs are better supported by existing sound evidence; the Sa'ueia briefs
have no phonology to defend them.
- **A Sa'ueia sound section** in `language-design.md` is the missing piece for
S1-S3 to be judged on more than the one paragraph of contrast.
- **Imperial register sound rules** for A4.
- **`kh` in `Kharzdun`**: add to the Airawa inventory or respell.
## Spelling state: Sa'auei'a vs Sa'ueia (as of 2026-11-03)
The rename is incomplete in both repos. Observed, not fixed here:
- **Zyphos vault** (`GameCult/Zyphos`, head `7661e1f`): the vault's own git log
has the rename ("Renamed mother trees and Sa'ueia", `3afb94f`, 2026-07-01).
Prose still mixes both spellings: roughly 45 `Sa'ueia` occurrences against 41
`Sa'auei'a`, across 27 files that still contain the old form (including
`AGENTS.md`, `notes/*`, and mid-sentence mixtures such as `World/index.md`,
which writes `[[Sa'ueia Continent]]` next to "Sa'auei'a nomadic
civilization"). One filename keeps the old form:
`Technologies/Sa'auei'a Mobile Technologies.md` (and its index entry).
Five filenames already use `Sa'ueia`.
- **Weksa** (this repo): `settings/eusocial-interbeing/language-design.md` (6
occurrences) and `README.md` (2) and `state/map.yaml` (2) still use
`Sa'auei'a`; `.voidbot/state/weksa-birth-seed-operations.json` quotes it in
summaries. This brief set uses `Sa'ueia` (the spelling the follow-up uses)
and leaves `language-design.md` alone, so the rule table above quotes rules
that the source file spells `Sa'auei'a`.
- The two spellings differ by more than an apostrophe: the old form has an
internal glottal (`Sa'auei'a`), the new one does not (`Sa'ueia`). Any
phonological argument that depended on the glottal (the old name's
syllable-break) has no support in the new spelling.