Holding IV, Enclave.
Written Year 24. Both liturgies written out in full Year 127, when the Archive was reorganised.
A Remnari name has three parts. Each is given differently and each does a different job.
The Given Name comes from your parents or guardians. It names the quality they hope you will have.
The Lineage Name comes down through the family and ties you to everyone who has carried it. Lineage Names often keep an old family trade or association long after the family stopped doing it.
The Astral Epithet you choose yourself when you come of age. It names the journey you mean to make. You choose it once. Four people have changed theirs; this holding records each change and why.
Saying all three in order acknowledges the whole person: where you came from, what you carry, what you intend. Save it for occasions that warrant it. Using it casually reads as intrusive rather than rude.
Given Names in use
Kept for parents choosing. These are the senses as we use them, which is not always how Remnar used them where we can compare.
| Name | Sense |
|---|---|
| Lyr | light |
| Toren | strength |
| Ilene | an opening, a door left standing open |
| Sael | steadiness under load |
| Doru | the anchor, the one who holds while others move |
| Mirren | mercy, the kind that costs the giver |
| Vesh | welcome |
| Yshara | patience, the kind that waits without expecting |
| Ovin | quiet |
| Rhoan | the current, the thing that carries |
| Sefa | mending |
| Kellen | kindling |
| Iyen | distance, and the willingness to cross it |
| Ami | not established. See below. |
Lineage Names in use here: Stellara, Voidweaver, Anthek, Ilketh, Keluth, Marrenth, Vor. Epithets are not registered, being one to a person; the roll of those conferred is kept with the rite record.
The last name on the list
Ami was added in Year 394. It is the only name on this register carried without a sense.
A family asked to use it, so the keepers put the usual question to the man who carries it. He did not know. He was named on the Ground of Rolara, by people generations away from how we use these names, and nobody told him.
The keepers then searched Holding VII for two years, in case it was a Remnar word the tellings had worn the meaning off. They found nothing. Ovin Keluth Slowlight’s standing instruction is that a name entered without a sense carries the record of the search that failed, so nobody repeats it.
So the register reads not established.
Three children born here since have been named from it. A Given Name is normally chosen for the quality it names. These were not, and it is the only case of its kind on the register.
An observance twice deferred, and held
A motion to hold a Rite of Echoing for the man who carries that name was deferred twice, in Year 396 and Year 399. The ground both times was that the rite needs the community assembled and he was never aboard long enough to assemble it.
It was held. Both liturgies were performed in full and in the proper order, under the open sky with the community assembled, and the register was amended the same day.
He carries all three parts. Ami he brought with him, given him young on the Ground of Rolara by hands he cannot name, through a succession of orphanages that kept no record this holding can reach. The other two are ours, conferred and spoken here by our own customs: Oresinger returned to him by the assembled, and Astralis his own, said at the epithet liturgy when he was asked what he was for.
The naming liturgy
Held under the open Astral sky with the community assembled. The conferring party holds the child.
Conferrer. This one is come to us. This one has no name.
Assembled. This one has no name.
Conferrer. I give what I hope for. (The Given Name is spoken.)
Assembled. (The Given Name is returned, all together.)
Conferrer. I give what was given to me. (The Lineage Name is spoken.)
Assembled. (The Lineage Name is returned.)
Conferrer. The third is not mine to give.
Assembled. The third is not ours to give.
Conferrer. Then this one is named as far as we are able.
Assembled. (Both names returned together, repeated until the voices come even.)
The returning is the rite. A name one person says is a name given. A name the assembled say back is a name held. The repetition at the close runs until the voices come even, and the liturgy sets no number.
Between the fourth and fifth exchanges there is a passage we cannot write down. It is not spoken and not gestured. All we hold is the direction: the assembled hold the child in mind together. Every keeper who has copied this liturgy has hit the same gap in the same place and none has found a way to close it.
The epithet liturgy
At maturity, same place, same shape, with one difference: nobody confers. You speak, and the assembled answer.
Speaker. I have been given what was hoped for me. I have been given what was carried to me. Now I say what I am for.
Assembled. Say what you are for.
Speaker. (The Epithet is spoken.)
Assembled. (The Epithet is returned, then the full name, all three parts, all together, once.)
That single return is the only time we use all three parts as a matter of course. Every other use is reserved.
Family variants
Eleven are recorded here in full. Four are still performed.
The Anthek form drops the conferrer’s third line and has the assembled speak it instead.
The Keluth form requires the returning twice, once at the naming and once at the following observance, on the reasoning that a community that returns a name only in the moment has not yet been tested on it.
Three forms are no longer performed at all. Standing instruction of the keepers: a disused form is kept at full length regardless.
Where the rite came from
Holding VII attests naming in the open air, before witnesses, with the name returned aloud, in eleven independent accounts of Remnar. It is the best corroborated single practice in that holding.
What Holding VII does not attest is the three-part name. No account of Remnar describes it. Our own record shows the three-part form settled by resolution in Year 24, twenty-three years after the founding, out of a debate the proceedings keep at length. The question put was whether a people holding no lineage records should carry a name element that names a lineage. The assembly resolved that it should.
So the ceremony is inherited and the name it confers is not. Both are recorded here as what they are.