"Do you guys have anything to add to my summary of why we were cool with killing Anaander? Who needs a nickname, everybody needs nicknames if Promise might need to interact with the concept of you."

"I'm called the Lord of the Radch, at home."

"I'll be Blue."

"Charming." Write write. "Are you sticking with 'Magic' - what about you -" she says to Cor and Mirelótë's respective Maitimos. "Rirosseth's probably a nickname enough."

"I guess I'll be - Tirion? As the only one who still lives there?"

"Sure." She looks at 'Magic'.

"I am fine with my existing nickname."

"If you say so."

" - or you can change it, if there's something wrong with it? I'm not attached."

"It's just kinda dumb? It isn't distinctive or aesthetic. Dunno what Number is getting at either."

"Coming up with nicknames is actually horrible."

Everyone else nods in firm agreement.

"Why?"

"Well, we're all speaking different languages, so it's a little bit of guesswork what a given name is even going to sound like to anyone else, so you're more or less just picking a word or collection of syllables that you're fond of, except I don't actually - form preferences about words. I like actual peoples' names so I guess I could pull out a baby naming book and pick one - or the list of baby names popular in my year - but I know people with all of those names, so who am I going to step on? And if I really like a baby name I am going to name an actual baby that, I'm not going to use it on a nickname for invisible speed-up fairies, I don't like very many baby names and don't care to waste them."

" - that, except like any Noldo whose parents do not live in a cave in the woods for political reasons I had several decades in education on forming preferences about words."

"Oh, you can't actually try at that, it'll make you miserable, just get good at guessing what the person you're talking to will think."

" - that's what I did, yes."

"Oh no, I didn't know that."

"Of course not!"

"Does anyone else feel like there aren't enough good male names -"

Everyone else with 'male' as a category for names nods.

"What will happen if you give them a female name, will they explode? Get confused?"

"You can't just do that!"

"But why not, what happens."

" - well, people would be confused about the gender of your child, whenever you talked about them, and they would probably resent you for giving them a wrong-gender name, and people'd wonder what you meant by it... I really doubt they'd change their gender, people raised as the wrong gender still don't normally want to switch."