on the naming of dragons
Sep. 24th, 2009 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelSo usually, I wait to name dragons until they're adults -- especially if they're ones I don't have strong attachments to as individuals. (Named hatchlings can only be frozen or released into the wilderness; unnamed hatchlings can be adopted by other people.)
If I know I am keeping a particular dragon, I may name it, but only once it's gendered. (Young hatchlings have no [visible] gender. I guess growing wings is the equivalent of puberty?)
There are rare exceptions -- Te5La co1L was named as soon as it hatched -- and there are some gender-neutral names, but most often I will wait until gendering. (It is important to know that dragons can only be named once; renaming isn't possible.)
... so I have these hatchlings on my scroll, right, and I'm waiting for them to grow the heck up so I can get more dragons. And I know that I'm going to be keeping most of them, because one was a female whiptail (to go with my mail whiptail, except they aren't cooperating breedingwise) and one was part of a lineage project and one was a Dorkface. So I go through and I name them, and then I realize that there was a problem with one of the dragons I'd named.
Well, two problems -- I'd been meaning to keep it unnamed to use as trade leverage. Dorkfaces are a lot more common now, and a lot of serious dragcave people don't care about Dorkfaces unless they're very low generation, but still, a black Dorkface is 'worth' more than a normal black (with the exception of caveborn blacks, which are rare as fuck nowadays, and possibly also purebred black).
But more importantly, it hadn't gendered yet. And I hadn't given it a gender-neutral name... Ironically, the other three I was naming all got names that would have worked either way, but for some reason I gave this one a definitively male name. (I think I got confused by the facts that a) my other black Dorkface is a male, and b) the hatchling right below it had gendered male, so I was thinking 'male' when I named it.)
Naturally, giving it a male name meant that it gendered female.
Whoops. :D
... I still need names for my gold and silver though. They aren't lineaged, so there aren't any naming requirements, but I can't think of good names for them. (Both are female.)
If I know I am keeping a particular dragon, I may name it, but only once it's gendered. (Young hatchlings have no [visible] gender. I guess growing wings is the equivalent of puberty?)
There are rare exceptions -- Te5La co1L was named as soon as it hatched -- and there are some gender-neutral names, but most often I will wait until gendering. (It is important to know that dragons can only be named once; renaming isn't possible.)
... so I have these hatchlings on my scroll, right, and I'm waiting for them to grow the heck up so I can get more dragons. And I know that I'm going to be keeping most of them, because one was a female whiptail (to go with my mail whiptail, except they aren't cooperating breedingwise) and one was part of a lineage project and one was a Dorkface. So I go through and I name them, and then I realize that there was a problem with one of the dragons I'd named.
Well, two problems -- I'd been meaning to keep it unnamed to use as trade leverage. Dorkfaces are a lot more common now, and a lot of serious dragcave people don't care about Dorkfaces unless they're very low generation, but still, a black Dorkface is 'worth' more than a normal black (with the exception of caveborn blacks, which are rare as fuck nowadays, and possibly also purebred black).
But more importantly, it hadn't gendered yet. And I hadn't given it a gender-neutral name... Ironically, the other three I was naming all got names that would have worked either way, but for some reason I gave this one a definitively male name. (I think I got confused by the facts that a) my other black Dorkface is a male, and b) the hatchling right below it had gendered male, so I was thinking 'male' when I named it.)
Naturally, giving it a male name meant that it gendered female.
Whoops. :D
... I still need names for my gold and silver though. They aren't lineaged, so there aren't any naming requirements, but I can't think of good names for them. (Both are female.)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-29 04:33 am (UTC)All mine have quite unisex "fantasy" names, made up on the spot; the only "theme" is that each name begins with a different letter of the alphabet. (The recent glut of new dragons has screwed this up -- I now want more breeds than there are letters, so I've had to double up a bit: both the deep-sea and the water dragon will be N names, and the various "horse" dragons will be K names. And I still don't know what I'm going to do for the mint and the black, because I'm still out of letters!)