#for example ‘it’ is the default pronoun for a stranger cat outside one’s own clan

[clanborn]

my alaska clans don’t really have any notable naming conventions because cats interchange clans a lot (and i named everyone before i really thought about naming conventions lol) except that nicknames are sorta built into their society. since cats tend to have long names friends/family and clanmates tend to use nicknames more often in casual and familiar settings. nicknames can be just a cat’s prefix (loon as nickname for loonshadow) but can also be shortened or simplified further to a single syllable of the name (gray for graylingblaze or hem for hemlocklight). they can also end up as an abstraction of certain sounds in the name that warps into new sounds (rizi for horizonshine, pronounced “ree-zee”, etc). all cats end up with a nickname eventually, sometimes multiple, it’s kind of like a first name/surname situation in which the full prefix-suffix name acts as a more professional surname.