On inventing mecha names

Naming people, and naming things: perennial troubles in writing. I find that defining some rules, restrictive though it might feel, actually makes the whole business easier. It also shapes the resulting name-sets so they do feel like they come from one specific cultural context.

In Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright, Taru armours have names which alliterate, and include nature (e.g. Halcyon, Ash), pastoral (Reaper), or temporal (Cockcrow, Twilit) elements. Here’re some examples:

• Conquest at Cockcrow
• Flowering Fusion
• Twilit Tyrant
• Cloudburst Castle
• Halcyon Hammer
• Reaper on the Ridgeline
• Autumn Eagle
• Hellebore Hulk
• Caprice of Prickthorn (this is Kin-Bright’s old armour; it was called Prince’s Caprice when her father piloted it in his youth)
• Nightingale of Needles
• Sundown Sickle
• Hailing Harvest

An additional constraint: the names have to fit alternating metre! Almost all of these can work in a x/x/x/x/x/ pattern. A few, such as Reaper on the Ridgeline, Conquest at Cockcrow, Prince’s Caprice, and Hellebore Hulk, can only appear at the start of lines with initial inversion (/xx/x/x/x/).

I remain very pleased with Caprice of Prickthorn, because that's easy to fit in when given in full (x/x/x), but can be shortened to Caprice when I need x/ and Prickthorn when I need /x. At one point Kin-Bright mentions the armour's former name, Prince's Caprice. I meant the name change when it entered her possession to indicate something about how the servants in her clan's household regard her personality—something she doesn't think about herself—though I don't know how clearly that comes across in the poem!