GNOME NAMES
Gnomes introducing themselves to sentient beings whom they've decided to trust will usually reel off a string of eight to sixteen names, ending with "for short." In the moment that follows, the gnome will often add, "But you can call me..." offering then a small handful of syllables, maybe as few as one, to serve as an easy-to-say nickname their new friends can use. Gnomes joke to larger gnome-shaped creatures that the expansiveness of their names makes up for their shortness of stature. But if the bodies of gnomes were proportional to the size of their names, then even storm giants would crane their necks to gaze up at the undersides of Gnomish knees.
Full gnome names are only chanted twice in their long lives, lives that can last four or five centuries if not cut short by the unpredictable world in which they live. As you might guess, those two recitations of a gnome's full name are at their birth and at their death.
Most infant gnomes emerge directly into the folds of their clan, and the chant of their name begins with their first breath. Even as the midwife towels them off and puts on their first cloth cap, the deepest and most ancient clan appellations are sung by the clan elders. As the infant nurses, the strange song of its name—a poem of its history back to the origins of the gnomish race itself—filters into its ears. At the same time, a namescribe catches it all in the pages of a thick vellum book. When the gnome learns to read, it will have course to read its name to itself and contemplate the deep meanings within each of its thousands of parts, echoing back into the mythic beginnings of time.
In this era, gnomish birth name chants generally take a quarter-turn of the planet to complete. To an outsider, it would sound like a song with endless lyrics, endless refrains. The name comprises thousands of gnomish name-strings sung in order, and each of those name-strings comprises dozens of single names, so that certain single names repeat at regular intervals then fade from the chant only to arise again later in the song. And the syllables of single names change and evolve, rippling echoes across the chanted representation of eons. Fonnigar turns to Fonnigan and eventually to Fennikan; Ellenod becomes Ellynwid becomes Ellywick.
For the first hour or so the tune of the song is solemn, atonal and slow, each appellation receiving a beat, its syllables, when there are more than one, broken and accented into a rhythm:
...Nan Nin Namba Nop Omo Nopno Mim Nom Nampo Mimm Nupp Omma Nomm…
By the second hour, the tune begins to dance into arpeggios, riffs and rising melodies, reflective of an epoch wherein the Gnomish race had differentiated itself from its foregones and thrived in a long-lasting and legendary peace. The names gain more syllables, and the rhythm grown frenetic:
...Lop-Monix Crimble Procyollix Kumblekrim Krumblemaker Procendilla-Procendora Lopmottinix Betren Nopnomino Nomnupp...
Later, minor notes propagate; some names are whispered, others growled, grunted or barked. For there was a time when Gnomish forutnes failed. Gnomes were hunted, enslaved, and broken apart as a culture. Gnomes betrayed one another, sold each other out for temporary gain, attempted to pass as halflings or even dwarves, abandoning their language, and nearly driving the race to extinction.
The last hours of the chant of the full name of a new gnome are by far the most complex. The melodies defy expectation, melodies drifting abruptly into tonalities heard nowhere else. These passages of the new gnome's name call for contrapuntal techniques in which two, three or more voices are needed in the same moment. Echoes of earlier names return in muted and metamorphosed ways, and at last the parents, who may have sung some but mainly remained silent, prepare their voices to join the chorus, for the last minutes of the song are the most familiar to them, including their own daily names. They join in:
...Nominosidden Procyonix Bertramm Crumblecrumm Skalliwaye Tuckinnakiffle Idikken Eddigon Lopotomoxia Skalliwinkle Nopnomio-Nopnomio Krackmaker Nominday…
And as the last fifty or so name-strings are chanted, the infant gnome's two progenitors join to chant the new individual's final phrases:
...Whanomino-Sidden Procyonex Betramm-Clumblecrumm Skalliwinkle Fennykin Annoggun Tuckindakuffs.
The very final names are held, each one sung for a full breath until the breath fails. By then, the infant gnome, now fully named into its new life, is usually fast asleep.
What this means (as you may have come to realize) is that the very first names of every gnome are the same. What are those names? Those names are for gnomes to know.
Day to day in gnomish society, gnomes go by what is appropriately called their "daily names." These consist of anywhere from six to twenty-four elements of the full name, drawn almost entirely from the last fifty single names. Few gnomes would include Nan, Nin, Nambo or Nop in its daily name. A gnome's caste, family line, reputation, occupation, community standing, ambitions, alliances, and many other elements come into consideration in the determination of its daily name, which naturally changes throughout the gnome's life. Changing a daily name is as easy as calling oneself by it, then enlisting a few friends to begin to use it, too. Once other gnomes hear the new daily name in use, they do the polite thing and use it themselves until it catches on. In Gnomish society, it is most uncommon for there to be any delay, conflict or resistance to a gnome's new daily name.
There is a great deal communicated among gnomes through the mere act of saying their daily name. For instance, a gnomish princess may introduce herself with only eight of the forty-odd parts of her daily name (ensuring that some of those parts sufficiently indicate her high lineage). Doing so will indicate to those meeting her that she is unquestionably royal; but the curtailment of her full daily name (normally quite long for royals) will be understood as a sign that she is eager to connect on a more informal and personal level with present company. It will be taken as a sign of humility as well as vulnerability. A polite thing for the other gnomes to do would be to let the conversation unspool for a while and then allow someone to politely ask if the princess would be willing to share her full daily name. When she consents to tell her full daily name, her doing so will be seen as an act of transparency and respect to her company, and she will understand her company to be deeply allied with her.
For another example, a gnome of poor reputation traveling in a distant Gnomish community might use twenty-nine names on first introduction as a way to seem more important and well respected than he really is. He will consciously try to include those names that point to the heights of the pedigree he wants to convey, and he will omit those names that suggest a low standing, a tarnished reputation, or relations to gnomes with such smudges.
A gnome addressing a peer by a daily name that they have stopped using some time ago is generally a disrespectful gesture, but the nature of the disrespect becomes clear based on the name. An old acquaintance might purposely use one of a gnome's prior daily names as a way to force that gnome to update her on his current one. She will, of course, already know his current daily name: the unspoken communication is that he should have remained in closer touch with her so that she wouldn't have fallen behind in his doings.
A gnome addressing a peer might omit a particular single name from the other's daily name, pretending it was an accidental slip. However, the gesture is almost never accidental. "Forgetting" part of another other's name is an implication that there has been a break between the addressed gnome and the reputation represented by the "forgotten" name. So for example, if one gnome called another by sixteen of his seventeen appellations — but causally omitted Hurweather — it would be a significant hint that the addressor felt the addressee had somehow failed the standard of hard work that the Hurweather name has signified for millennia.
Hearing this, the gnome thus disrespected could call attention to the omission, and the first gnome would pretend it had been an accident. But a more sensitive gnome would not only understand the meaning of the omission, but take it to heart, making it a point to address his peer's, or his community's, disillusionment with him.
Gnomes are fiercely proud of their names and have almost never been known to lie about them to other gnomes. It just isn't done. It would not only be a self-injury of the highest order, but the lie would be far too challenging to carry for long without exposure. And to be exposed as having falsified a name within the Gnomish community would be most shameful, grounds for ostracism. But when dealing with non-gnomes, it's another matter entirely. Gnomes in the company of humans, halflings, elves, dwarves and so on readily and easily take on pseudonyms as needed.
Among trusted intelligent bipeds, gnomes have what they call a "for short" name, which is only one to three elements of their daily names. For example: Fennykin Annoggun Tuckindafuffs—for short.
In very amicable company, gnomes also often have a "short-for-short" name, a mere one to four syllables, in this case: Tuck. The mouths of non-gnomes don't have the patience or dexterity for much more, and gnomes have evolved a politeness and accommodation unrivaled among the races. They permit friends of other races to use very informal nicknames, but those who wish to respect the friendship might learn and occasionally use a gnomes daily name in its entirety as a sign of high esteem.
The second, and for most gnomes, only other time their full name is sung, is at their wake. It is sung slowly, at half the speed of the birth chant. Depending on the year, the character of the deceased, the locale, and other factors, the chant is either begun at sunset ending at sunrise, or vice versa.
All gnomes known to be dead are sung. It has happened on rare occasion that gnomes go missing for a very long time. After being unseen and unheard from for two or three centuries, they are assumed dead and their names are sung. But a few times, the assumed dead gnome walks back into town with three hundred years worth of stories to tell. When the prodigal dies in witness of the community, her name will be sung again, resulting in the rare third full-name chanting.
Long chants of what are called "ceremonial names," lasting from one to three hours, occur on a few auspicious times in a gnome's life: marriages, certain confirmations of adulthood and high honors that gnomes may achieve. Many ceremonies such as university graduations, hirings, lesser honors, appointments to special offices and such call for the chanting of a gnome's "honorific name," which can last between ten minutes and an hour.
This is part of what it means to live for four or five hundred years in a body that you recognize is relatively small compared to other bodies of similar shape: you spend a lot of time in your life paying attention to your name and the names of those around you, not at all as a mere exercise in egoic self-examination, but as a cultural phenomenon, a poem of self and other, a story understood with incredible depth even at a single hearing.
That no gnome has fewer than 60,000 individual names strung together in identification of its individuality makes them humble, for each gnome stands before all of her ancestors. Her own name is the last element of the life story of her entire race. While deeply proud of the story and all of her ancestors, she also feels accompanied by them, and expected to rise to the distilled essences of virtue, strength, skill, expertise, wisdom, accomplishment, importance, or effect that each ancestor's name has come to represent in the total story.
So when you unpack Tuck to Tuckindakuffs to Fennykin Annoggun Tuckindakuffs to Whanomino-Sidden Procyonex Bertramm Crumblecrumm Skalliwaye Idikken Loptomoxia Fennykin Annoggun Tuckindafuffs and that into something that takes hundreds of pages to write, it's clear how Gnomish names run as deep and rich as the Gnomish race itself.