N00B NAME CHALLENGE: the reveal!

[qatarperegrine]

Before we reveal the answer to all these riddles, Justin and I thought we'd share some of the name hints that didn't quite make the cut (most of which were rejected when we decided to allow Googling):

• The first historically notable bearer of this name was an empress.
  
• Were proper names allowed, playing it would be worth 12 points in Scrabble.
  
• It is paired with Logos to form one of the emanations of God in Valentinian Gnosticism.
  
• It only has one more letter than syllable.
  
• According to Wikipedia, a small tribe of this name lives in the Amazon; one of its unusual cultural practices is that men celebrate the birth of their offspring by cutting their legs with rodent teeth. Justin does not intend to follow this tradition.
  
• It has been in the top 1000 girls' names in the US 71 of the last 100 years -- though not in either of the years we were born.
  
• The top Google hit of this name is of an actress. (However, making universal statements about top Google hits seems dangerous in this age of personalized search results!)
  
• It is the name of this cat.
  
• It is the name of one of President Bartlet's daughters.

The n00b's name is actually Zoë. :-)

Comments

[chrisamaphone]

yeah, i like the way it looks too. it's kind of interesting how resistant english seems to be to diacritics, given all the ambiguities. it's kind of like historically we introduced them as training wheels for funny words like cooperation, but now that everyone knows how to pronounce it, we don't really use them anymore.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

It also happens in Portuguese, and in French.

In a couple of years, the trema will be abolished in Portuguese words, except those marked as imports.

Many (most?) French people don't write accents in Internet chats, or when capitalizing.