Alicornutopia

Riff on the name Voronoi somehow? Or perhaps its complement Delaunay?

Yeah, that's an option. But if I'm tempted in that direction I'll probably just end up conlanging the name for the chunks anyway, because they're bound to have had a name for those way before they had the math that describes their properties.

I have attempted to come up with plausible English-ish terms for the thing, similar to how "alucine" in Alucine is not the literal sequence of sounds used in-universe but rather is an attempt to invent a closest equivalent in English. (This as opposed to either conlanging it, or trying to produce a direct English translation like "world-shard". I don't want it to be a compound word because it's such an everyday fundamental, it would be like if languages on Earth habitually had only compound terms for, like, "hill", or "town", or "country".)

Any thoughts on this list? Ones that sound nicer, sound more like they mean the thing, are less confusing, etc.?

• alven
• antrel
• sill
• vale
• bay

There were going to be more but then I threw out a bunch because I couldn't stand them and started driving myself slightly insane trying to find replacements.

I've also been tentatively trying to figure out what the next bunch of theme groups after five will be, in the hope that maybe once I've got a six-group and a seven-group and an eight-group and a nine-group I will have something left over that I can go "well, I guess I'm not saving it for a higher number anymore" and give it to the fives. But I haven't really gotten anywhere with that, like, at all.

I like “sill” out of that list.

I tried to think of some groups a little bit but I only thought of regular groups of six, like there are six faces on a cube, not ones where every thing has a name of its own.

Well, there are seven days in a week, heh.

I don't like the idea of using vale or bay, because those are existing English words for existing geographical features. Of those five, I like sill the best. It's also an English word, but for a completely unrelated concept which would have less chance of causing confusion.

I'd just like to vote against antrel because when I tried to google it to find out what it meant all the result were for some athlete whose name it was. Alven got slightly better results, in that it came up as several peoples' names, not just one. I agree with sill.

"Filled sill" sounds a bit, er, silly, but that's the only objection I have to "sill"; I like it a lot otherwise.

from wiktionary: "A horizontal, structural member of a building near ground level on a foundation or pilings or lying on the ground in earth-fast construction and bearing the upright portion of a frame. Also spelled cill. Also called a ground plate, groundsill, sole, sole-plate, mudsill. An interrupted sill fits between posts instead of being below and supporting the posts in timber framing."

Maybe by analogy a "filled sill" can be an "interrupted sill"? Or maybe call them solid sills, or hard sills, or impassable sills, or something else like that?

(I personally like "vale" best because it kindof conveys the meaning. I think alven sounds prettier than antrel, which sounds kindof like anthill to me. But I do like the -trel ending a lot.)

I welcome alternate constructions. I tried poking around the Anglish Moot to see if anyone had come up with an Anglish term I could steal, but the best I got out of it was "bay" and it's really not very good. Alven and antrel are both rederivations from vaguely relevant Latin.

I rather specifically don't want to relate my use of "sill" (which is in fact also rederived Latin, from the same place where we get "syllable") to the architectural term, so no interrupted sills for me.

Sill sounds kindof like cell, and that's cool, because I think of the chunks as cells like half the time. (I would definitely vote for "cell" if it were an option.)

of "cell", etymonline has this to say:

early 12c., "small monastery, subordinate monastery" (from Medieval Latin in this sense), later "small room for a monk or a nun in a monastic establishment; a hermit's dwelling" (c. 1300), from Latin cella "small room, store room, hut," related to Latin celare "to hide, conceal."

The Latin word represents PIE root *kel- (2) "to cover, conceal" (cognates: Sanskrit cala "hut, house, hall;" Greek kalia "hut, nest," kalyptein "to cover," koleon "sheath," kelyphos "shell, husk;" Latin clam "secret;" Old Irish cuile "cellar," celim "hide," Middle Irish cul "defense, shelter;" Gothic hulistr "covering," Old English heolstor "lurking-hole, cave, covering," Gothic huljan "cover over," hulundi "hole," hilms "helmet," halja "hell," Old English hol "cave," holu "husk, pod").

so maybe you can go off of one of those? eg, cala, kalia, kel, cuile, halja