Post by Lady Ten on Sept 4, 2012 16:50:50 GMT -6
What does it mean?
According to Third-style, it would be interpreted to indicate a cloudy nature, for a cat whose behavior is gloomy, uncertain, and difficult to understand. This doesn't make any sense as a feature to be named after, so I never recommend cloud as a suffix.
Recently I've been seeing an "easy-going" interpretation growing in popularity. The reasoning for this interpretation looks suspiciously like the same reasoning people use to defend "pool" as meaning the exact same thing. A laid-back personality is a decent thing to be named after, but why you would pick either of these words to symbolize it is dubious.
Justifications of cloud remind me of the way I defend the suffix "stream" -- probably influenced by the names from the early books, conditioning me to see the suffix as inconspicuous, pretty, and reasonable via exposure, whereas if I hadn't taken a liking to it there, I probably would have stuck more to anatomy suffixes. It certainly makes less sense than the other suffixes I endorse. Stream, I mean. But I digress.
Clouds aren't necessarily calm or affable. They can be, but depends on the cloud. It's highly situational, even if the archetypical cloud is "laid-back" according to some people's preconceptions. In this way, the associations and connotations of "cloud" are also somewhat cultural, depending on a person's background and how they've been taught to see things. Not all schemas are universal. I don't really associate clouds with getting along well with others, perhaps only in accordance with where I come from.
My family uses the word "weather" differently than most people. In the summertime, here in Texas, it gets hot. It gets stupid hot. That's not weather; that's summertime in Texas. The sky is clear, the sun is bright, and if you go outside, it's not a matter of "if" you start sweating, it's when. Sometimes it's humid, sometimes it's dry, but the heat is monotonous, from sunup to past sundown. Even after dark, it's hot outside. We don't consider this weather. It's not that bad, but the meteorological predictions of "another sunny, sunny day" become superfluous. Every day is the same.
Except for some days. Some days, the heat begins to lift, and a cool breeze blows through. I go outside onto the driveway and I can smell it. In the sky, over the treeline, grey clouds are building, towering and thick and ominous. They're rolling in from the north. The wind is pushing them closer, and they're dark with potential. That's when the people of my family say, "looks like weather."
Then, if we're lucky, we'll have some weather. It always starts out light, with a little pitter-patter of soft droplets that slowly grows in strength. It sounds much louder on the tin roof of our barn, so the horses get scared and run to the far end of the pasture. Soon the rain's coming down harder and, if it's a storm, the thunder cracks only seconds after the bolts of lightning, but just as soon, the gap between light and sound is widening again, and the rain falls softer and softer than before. Then it's gone.
That's how I think of clouds in the summer. Clouds are weather. Weather is unpredictable. For a lot of other people, though, clouds might be more like what we have in the winter: thin, scraggly tufts of grey haze that don't do much of anything but block out the sun and look as lively as roadkill. Sometimes we even have "regular" clouds that look "peaceful" and all that, but I associate peacefulness far more with old trees than with clouds. Not that I'm advocating "tree" as a suffix.
My point is "acting like a cloud" doesn't mean much of anything to me, seeing as they don't all have one set script of behavior. I don't like cloud as a suffix because I prefer for suffixes to not only be plain and simple, but also nearly cross-cultural. Considering how much perceptions of clouds can vary based on nothing but Clan location (and season), it'd be hard to give a one-size-fits-all interpretation to it as a suffix, at least from the mellowness angle. It'd be as variable as flora and fauna prefixes.
That's fine for prefixes, of which there can be many, but for suffixes, that's not good. Other standard suffixes (claw, fur, flower) are more or less reusable no matter where you are. In this way "-cloud" is, at the very least, an outlier. To accept "cloud" as associated with one mood or pattern of behavior relies on the same reasoning that accepts "song" as indicative of cheerfulness, despite the numerous different types of songs, even among natural birdcalls and human/anthro-cat perceptions of their tone.
For a calm, indifferent cat with no outstanding skills, my suffix recommendation would depend upon whether the cat was more stony or breezy in personality.
According to Third-style, it would be interpreted to indicate a cloudy nature, for a cat whose behavior is gloomy, uncertain, and difficult to understand. This doesn't make any sense as a feature to be named after, so I never recommend cloud as a suffix.
Recently I've been seeing an "easy-going" interpretation growing in popularity. The reasoning for this interpretation looks suspiciously like the same reasoning people use to defend "pool" as meaning the exact same thing. A laid-back personality is a decent thing to be named after, but why you would pick either of these words to symbolize it is dubious.
Justifications of cloud remind me of the way I defend the suffix "stream" -- probably influenced by the names from the early books, conditioning me to see the suffix as inconspicuous, pretty, and reasonable via exposure, whereas if I hadn't taken a liking to it there, I probably would have stuck more to anatomy suffixes. It certainly makes less sense than the other suffixes I endorse. Stream, I mean. But I digress.
Clouds aren't necessarily calm or affable. They can be, but depends on the cloud. It's highly situational, even if the archetypical cloud is "laid-back" according to some people's preconceptions. In this way, the associations and connotations of "cloud" are also somewhat cultural, depending on a person's background and how they've been taught to see things. Not all schemas are universal. I don't really associate clouds with getting along well with others, perhaps only in accordance with where I come from.
My family uses the word "weather" differently than most people. In the summertime, here in Texas, it gets hot. It gets stupid hot. That's not weather; that's summertime in Texas. The sky is clear, the sun is bright, and if you go outside, it's not a matter of "if" you start sweating, it's when. Sometimes it's humid, sometimes it's dry, but the heat is monotonous, from sunup to past sundown. Even after dark, it's hot outside. We don't consider this weather. It's not that bad, but the meteorological predictions of "another sunny, sunny day" become superfluous. Every day is the same.
Except for some days. Some days, the heat begins to lift, and a cool breeze blows through. I go outside onto the driveway and I can smell it. In the sky, over the treeline, grey clouds are building, towering and thick and ominous. They're rolling in from the north. The wind is pushing them closer, and they're dark with potential. That's when the people of my family say, "looks like weather."
Then, if we're lucky, we'll have some weather. It always starts out light, with a little pitter-patter of soft droplets that slowly grows in strength. It sounds much louder on the tin roof of our barn, so the horses get scared and run to the far end of the pasture. Soon the rain's coming down harder and, if it's a storm, the thunder cracks only seconds after the bolts of lightning, but just as soon, the gap between light and sound is widening again, and the rain falls softer and softer than before. Then it's gone.
That's how I think of clouds in the summer. Clouds are weather. Weather is unpredictable. For a lot of other people, though, clouds might be more like what we have in the winter: thin, scraggly tufts of grey haze that don't do much of anything but block out the sun and look as lively as roadkill. Sometimes we even have "regular" clouds that look "peaceful" and all that, but I associate peacefulness far more with old trees than with clouds. Not that I'm advocating "tree" as a suffix.
My point is "acting like a cloud" doesn't mean much of anything to me, seeing as they don't all have one set script of behavior. I don't like cloud as a suffix because I prefer for suffixes to not only be plain and simple, but also nearly cross-cultural. Considering how much perceptions of clouds can vary based on nothing but Clan location (and season), it'd be hard to give a one-size-fits-all interpretation to it as a suffix, at least from the mellowness angle. It'd be as variable as flora and fauna prefixes.
That's fine for prefixes, of which there can be many, but for suffixes, that's not good. Other standard suffixes (claw, fur, flower) are more or less reusable no matter where you are. In this way "-cloud" is, at the very least, an outlier. To accept "cloud" as associated with one mood or pattern of behavior relies on the same reasoning that accepts "song" as indicative of cheerfulness, despite the numerous different types of songs, even among natural birdcalls and human/anthro-cat perceptions of their tone.
For a calm, indifferent cat with no outstanding skills, my suffix recommendation would depend upon whether the cat was more stony or breezy in personality.
