#ty kk couldn't have done this without you

[mallowstep]

Sudden Misty AU thought because a thing just clicked wr2 the thing you mentioned about Catholic confirmation names and such. Is it at all common to like. Pick a prefix based on birth saint and a suffix based on confirmation saint? Since you've said the two-part name system is like a US thing in this AU, are there even enough saints for a custom like that to develop? I myself wasn't named for my birth saint and due to my affinity for the saint I was named after, I saw no need to pick a confirmation saint/name. So I know it would be far from a universal Catholic custom but still it strikes me as an interesting possible development from the worldbuiding as established.

hmm okay so i reached out to one of my friends who is catholic and does have a confirmation name for her opinions, so i'm mostly going to regurgitate her thoughts and add in warriors relevant content.

aaaaaalright so she said where she's from naming people after saints isn't super common but that it's a regional thing so -- uh. not sure what to take out of that, again, just going through things here.

(she also mentioned dates of birth/saints on days? it's late but hopefully i'm conveying the thing well. i know what i'm saying i'm not sure if it's making sense.)

and then okay -- so. before i get into what are saints called, she brought up something really interesting that you can have more conceptual prefixes/suffixes. she uses st. anthony and lost- or found- which is actually really intersting and has me thinking about brightheart now? like oohh brightheart getting hurt and. the name change thing doesn't really make sense in this but y'know. just a loose thought.

so. my general statement is: wrt prefixes, it's about as common as it is in this world, so that means it depends on area, language, religiosity, etc. but there's the added note that for saints who don't necessarily fit this system, you might go like...into more. representative ideas. you'd be more qualified than i to develop that, frankly.

wrt suffixes, it Also depends, but i'd say...it's reasonably common. it depends on family naming traditions, who's actually picking the suffix, and how everyone feels about it, but i would say that it is fairly common. depending on saint names, you might even have two options, since some words are prefixes and suffixes.

now, as for saints: so i said us because i was talking about firestar's family; i'm not 100% sure how this is spread across the world because thus far it hasn't mattered beyond "nutmeg, princess, and rusty are immigrants to the us and bluestar/frostfur rename rusty to firepaw to fit in/as a sign of acceptance." however it would, necessarily, have to have more history than just the us. without changing large swaths of us history, that means it is either a tradition among puritans, or the english as a whole.

(it is way too late for me to do anything more nuanced wrt us history than that statement. yes, i know there were other colonies and look i'm from new england, we are very obsessed with puritans over here. everyone i know from here has had multiple field trips to puritan towns that involve churning butter. don't at me.)

while i think, given puritan names, that it being a puritan thing that catches on is totally possible, i think it makes more sense and raises less questions if it's a broader european thing. now, i don't think it's tied to christianity here, not just because as soon as i say that it is someone is going to ask me what jesus' name is and i am not doing that, but also because then that raises questions about latin american colonies and then we circle back around to nutmeg & co and while there are solutions to that problem, they are solutions that i am not qualified to write and this au is fun (for me to write) + the occasional jaunt into worldbuilding which means that i'm not going to do that for this.

so.

since nutmeg & co are latino, i need it to not be tied to christianity lest i raise other issues, meaning...urghhh my history is not strong enough for this. for now let's say it's an anglo-saxon thing, and it is not wiped out in the norman invasion, but there is a class structure thing going on.

colonists in the us mostly had the two part names, and that eventually became the norm, and then the legal standard. (i.e., you have to name your child like that on a birth certificate. yes, that is fucked up.) in england, it's a lot more mixed. two part names are definitely the norm, but there are...urgh no i do not know enough to make a comment on british class structure. i'll leave it at, "the royal family probably has 'old style' names," where old style is like...a singular first name + a patronymic/matronymic surname.

so for example, jane doe's son john would be john janeson. or what have you.

(it's the icelandic system, in full.)

as for the rest of europe...for some reason i'm thinking germany is two part names. everywhere else i'm not sure.

that all said, two part names are definitely...well okay they're associated with english (even tho i think they would work in other languages, depending, here), so like. okay i assume. in like. middle school we all had to pick out spanish names except for me and alejandra and so on and i assume that's not a unique experience. and like you'd have kids picking a prefix. that's kinda cute.

we're not going to think about the number of cat words that are involved and how weird that would be, okay?

uhhh SO all of that is to say, while there would certainly be fewer saints to choose from, i think there would PROBABLY still be enough for it to work. i mean, hell, how many irish catholics are named mary?

(you do have the downside of not having a middle name to resort to for clarity and no i haven't figured out how that's resolved yet because saying...uh...fuck. um. say you had. hold on. it'll come to me.

okay whitetail and whiteclaw were apprentices at the same time in canon so say you had them in an elementary school, saying whitepaw, son of sunfish & whitepaw, daugher of [she doesn't have any canon parents], is super clunky. and i don't think saying whitepaw s would make sense if you didn't have surnames.

hm. i'm going to have to consider this because there's really no obvious resolution, at least in my mind. the floor is open to suggestions if anyone has any.)

okay yeah i think i answered your question and i would like to finish with this quote from her texts:

1. Absolutely insane to me that Mothwing has been established as Catholic, suffering from eldritch madness induced by this detail as we speak