Names
Mothers give birth at home and the birthing chamber is open only to the father and a favored professional, like an herbalist, midwife or physician. They alone will assist the mother. The first and last names are given at the time of birth by the parents. However, gnome births are cause for a family gathering.
Beyond the birthing chamber, a cleric and numerous friends and relations gather to await the newborn’s arrival. Many names will be given to the child this day. Any member of the community can offer a name.
Additional names are given throughout a gnome’s lifetime. They are usually descriptive of the person but can also be given in playful jest. Gnomes have exceptionally long names by the standards of other races. For this reason, gnomes will choose a name with which they prefer to be identified. Often this name is chosen for its ridiculousness or difficulty in pronunciation.
Read more about this topic: Gnome (Dungeons & Dragons)
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Nor youth, nor strength, nor wisdom spring again,
Nor habitations long their names retain,
But in oblivion to the final day remain.”
—Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612–1672)
“All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity—their links with their dead and the unborn.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“It was a poetic recreation to watch those distant sails steering for half-fabulous ports, whose very names are a mysterious music to our ears.... It is remarkable that men do not sail the sea with more expectation. Nothing was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)