gnome name lore

i've been meaning to design applecore's family so i could conceptualize his story, and in the process spent some time thinking on gnome culture. i've mentioned before they're based on nakie mole rats, with one big breeding queen with a handful of husbands. then there's her children and subservient siblings, who are generally going to be non-breeding females. once males reach breeding age and their hormones kick in, they have to leave and find a new colony and a queen to mate with, and they'll stay with the new colony until they die.

but i wanna talk about gnome naming and chld-rearing. gnome queens will give birth to litters of 2 or 3 every month or so, but the survival rate of pups is pretty low for one reason or another. so they don't bother naming them until pups are old enough to go out on their first scavenge--a very important rite of passage. whatever the young gnome brings back is what they will be named for. there is a prestige to bringing back something really good and earning a "delicious" name. meats and savories are favored, but sweets and anything Big are also impressive. applecore, alas, didn't do very well, but nobody expected him to make it back at all, being that he stands out so much with his pale coat. herring pie, the aunt in charge of raising the pups (the queen does none of it), was very proud of him.

so to draw up a family tree, honeycomb is his mother, herring pie is his aunt and honeycomb's sister, chicken wing and duck leg are applecore's closest half-sisters. nobody's certain who applecore's father is given he's an albino, but it's not unusual to have no idea who your father is. fathers don't do very much for the colony beside put babies in the queen, and don't last very long, usually replaced by younger males after a few years of service. male life expectancy is about half that of females in the "wild"

gnomes~ they're very cute but their lives are very hard and often short.