From 10820e80e791a16c1fc9e4b01841b1a0843c578f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Weksa Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2026 11:39:07 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Add DRAFT naming briefs for Zyphos names 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 --- .../eusocial-interbeing/zyphos-name-briefs.md | 399 ++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 399 insertions(+) create mode 100644 settings/eusocial-interbeing/zyphos-name-briefs.md diff --git a/settings/eusocial-interbeing/zyphos-name-briefs.md b/settings/eusocial-interbeing/zyphos-name-briefs.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c81e6ca --- /dev/null +++ b/settings/eusocial-interbeing/zyphos-name-briefs.md @@ -0,0 +1,399 @@ +# 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.