Weksa/settings/eusocial-interbeing/zyphos-name-briefs.md

Zyphos Name Briefs (DRAFT)

Status: every name in this file is DRAFT. None is canon. Per the README, 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: 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.

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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

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

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

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

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.

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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

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

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

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.

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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.