Namecrafting

Namecrafting is a naming practice prevalent in southern Carsa and Hypocos where an ergonymic ('name which is worked on') is modified over the length of a person's lifetime. Typically namecrafting takes place through lengthening the name with new honorifics or descriptors that reflect the life and development of the named. An element of a personal name which is crafted on its own is known as having a profile or identity.

Sarian culture has the best-known namecrafting customs, in which given, parent, clan, and location names are all subject to crafting, each observing characteristics of their own. By the end of one's lifetime a Sarian person's proper and full name is too long to be conveniently referred to or remembered. If a parent's name is used in a child's, that parent name will be continuously modified as the parent's own personal name changes until the death of the parent, and clan or village names are continuously updated during a lifetime. These all render an idea of 'full' addressing totally infeasible. For an illustrative example, the 7th-century warlord Khattudadm's full personal name at his death, as preserved in classical Tegeltian, is Baltū-Šahanšah-Gāgu-Qašadu-Laṭūbu-Anutu-Rablimi-Erqu-Našu-Hšaθra-Kādu-Serdu. His patronymic and clan name roughly reached a similar length, and his better-known name is an epithet that itself was modified with several more elements. Despite the comical inconvenience, the preservation and recording of such names is a distinct part of local cultural life, and the occupation of many Experts in traditional communities; villages and clans mark their existence by possession of a 'name register' that literate community members maintain, brought out to be used for particularly solemn rituals. The cultural significance of Sarian namecrafting seems to lie in native ideas of its magical powers, the symbolism of incorporating mere events into a personality, and the use of crafted names as a sort of biography.

Abrian culture, being related to the Sarian, also crafts an ergonymic separate from uncrafted praenomens and patronymics, but this receives typically no more than four to six elements over a lifetime and is not used in conversation or much official recording at all. Capay given names are crafted in a more predictable manner on each of a number of important events in a person's life (rite of passage, marriage, accession to high position, and retirement). In Utanistan and Varasan given names may be modified in very exceptional circumstances to recognise a person's achievement, in both cases being considered separate from ennobling titulature.