>>On 11/28/05, Jon_Lincicum at stream.com <Jon_Lincicum at stream.com> wrote: >>However, some animals on earth have their own name as a plural (i.e Moose, >>Fish, Orca) and since the house names are all based on animal names, >>self-pluralizing makes as much sense as any other approach. > >Just for the record, I don't believe that's true of Orca. All the sources I can find in the OED (including national geographic) refer to "orcas" or "orca whales". You may be right, I didn't bother to look that one up. Here are some more examples from our world: bison, deer, sheep, swine However, I don't think I've ever read many of the animal names on Dragaera with a "s" at the end. It's norska, darr, kethna, not norskas, darrs, kethnas. Or how about Virt e'Terics talking to Vlad about the conscript troops in the other companies? I believe her quote was "They're Teckla". They. Meaning more than one. Followed by Teckla sans "s". I nearly think this nails down the plural form of Teckla at the very least. Majikjon