Thread by @notcalledjack

I just did a quick-n-dirty biblical corpus analysis to help find a marketing alias for #perl6. Constraints: has to be 4 letters (like Perl). Has to be biblical ('cause "Pearl of great price", and 'cause Larry). Has to evoke Perl-ness, 6-ness.

I downloaded the KJV from Gutenberg (love the irony) and frequency data from Wiktionary (upto 1923 usages). Sorted all KJV four-letter words by inverse of frequency. Started hand-selecting.

So far, nothing good. Of course, I forgot the additional constraint is it has to be Google-able. So rare (hence freq data).

"Onyx" would be a contender, because "valuable mineral", but (a) taken [though low traction, it seems], (b) too dark for Camelia's colorful theme.

Various short-n-weird biblical names.

"Edom" got a look, because it's got backwards pun-ability (critical!), and because Wikipedia says "If the account may be taken at face value, the kingship of Edom was, at least in early times, not hereditary, perhaps elective."

Which is a nod to both Perl6's parentage, but also its nature as a choice to be made. It's not "the next version of Perl, which you must upgrade to", but "another kind of Perl, which you can choose to try".

But still, no real "Perl, camel, and/or six-ness" to it. Also a bit .. I don't know, clunky.

Maybe another tack to take is to riff off Perl6's central focus on languages and dialects. Babel and so on.

Or just rip a page out of 80s Larry's book and find a compelling 5 letter word ("Pearl [of great price]") and excise a single letter, leading to a unique new word.

Course, my cardinal sin in all this is I did the analysis in J. Perl6 is still lacking a friendly, usable REPL.

Hmm, there's the morpheme "lign" from "lign-aloes", which is nice because (a) "a perfume derived from some Oriental tree" and (b) Numbers 24:6 (six). Also because the groves that verse describes seems like a nice place for butterflies to hang out, fluttering around.

Or maybe "sion", an older rendering of "Zion", aka "the promised land". Nice name for the 100-year language. And also a play on "scion", descendent, heir, successor (Perl5->Perl6). But probably too politically charged. Also I like P5 and P6 as "sisters", not parent-child.

Or maybe the answer has been staring us in the face? A "beryl" is a precious stone, mentioned in the Bible. Remove one letter, (Pearl -> Perl) you have "berl". Which is like "perl", but the "p" is upside-down, as the "6" is upside-down and backwards.

But I think one goal of the marketing term is to give some distance from Perl, for a variety of reasons. For that, Ruby would have been perfect (distant but connected), and Guido picked it for that reason. But Ruby also has this going for it: biblestudytools.com/nlt/revelation… (carnelian).

So maybe "agat" for "agate"? Agate is mentioned in the bible, as is chalcedony, of which it is chiefly comprised. On chalcedony, it has two advantages: it's a hapax in the bible, so it's unique, and WP describes it as "assum[ing] a wide range of colors", as Camelia does.

Camelia has many colors, because TMTOWTDI, it "spans the spectrum". Also, I like the connection to The Fellowship of the ring, because Saruman corrected Gandalf: I'm not just white (like a Perl), I am of all colors (like white light, like chalcedony, like Perl6).

Chalcedon, which OED (sadly) says "is unlikely the origin of chalcedony" literally means "new town".

There is the word "lama", one L, in the OT, meaning "why". Lama -> Llama -> Camel, of course, but also invokes another religion, which is reflective of Perl6's studied inclusivity (6.c -> Christmas, 6.d -> Diwali), but sadly it comes from "Father why [lama] have you foresaken me?

Or "lieu", as in "in /lieu/ of the name Perl6?". Probably google-able. Not much otherwise pun-able, though.

@threadreaderapp Please unroll.