Traditions around clone names
You may have noticed that some, but not all, names are in the form GivenName LastName BunchOfDigitsAndLettersThatWereObviouslyPutTogetherByComputer, called a discriminant henceforth in this text.
First, I want to thank you for noticing, trying to do this particular bit of worldbuilding was giving me a headache. How to make an extra-galactic human civilization human-like, but distinct enough to be believable I felt was very hard, and only until did I try tacking on these numbers(UUIDs in computer terms) did it feel right, and the explanation I decided to use, inspired by the show Dark Angel's use of barcodes, was to be able to keep mostly identical, genetically engineered individuals apart...
Of course, 'Terra' wouldn't have this problem, wouldn't need to discriminate between clones this way, because I wanted the Terran characters to be audience surrogates. Much harder to do that with aliens, so they're a natural choice. But how alien is too alien? Well, this tale is about power and injustice, so the clones would be selected for their genes, but not necessarily be rewarded for it... Or in this case, the reward would go to the group of clones(they're after all quite clonely related, pun intended), not the individual clone, and therefore it'd be ok to sacrifice one clone for a larger group, since the reward would go to his clone-family.
In a related fashion, when a clone writes a book, the author name is the clone's, without the discriminant, because the ideas coming from a group of clones are assumed to be identical(that this is not really the case is what allows this to be a story about injustice). And the clones share together any royalties, credit, and are equally helped in terms of academic pursuits. Yes, you're getting a university teaching job because your clone wrote x many articles, y many books and was considered pretty smart, so you must be too...
It's comforting to the society at large to harness genetics in this way, considering they needed to selectively engineer humans for resistance to radiation, endurance in low-g environments, etc, etc.
Of course, this abandonment of personal responsibility can only lead to moral decay, graft, opportunism and the like.
But let's see what the clones, and the genemixes(the product of good old-fashioned heterogenic reproduction, aka sex, although some of them have the discriminant of their best known clone ancestor, just FYI, while less-admired ancestors just pass on a family name), have to say:
"We are to agree on everything then?" Argued Sorozon-Mitani White-Fuchs, a high ranking navy officer argued. Already there was backlash over his genemix origin within the party, but his political power was great. Only a handful of genemixes had been invited, the most successful, some of which, it was assumed, would be invited to create their own clonelines. There would be an Arctic Fox Ethno-faction, but no corresponding gene-faction, but I digress.
"If we fight amongst ourselves we've already lost! Do you think the Cummerbunds, the Oslossons or the Cosmopolitans disagree on as many things as us Fuchs?
"They would, if they'd lost so much to The Red Backstabbing as we did!"
"Order! Order!" Should the bailiff, as the crowd became loud and rowdy.
"I doubt the cosmopolitans even argue as to what to have for dinner, they're so well-mannered, so genteel and polite."
"I'm invited to see the gatherings of my White ancestors, not the Cosmopolitans, but I'm sure you would have said the same, and I'd call you a fool for thinking it. They are more considerate, more attached to the idea of civilized discourse, but they are not in agreement over everything.
"And just what do they argue over most?" His questioner was smiling, as if he'd won the argument.
Sorozon-Mitani smiled like the fox his Fuchs ancestors were named for. "You'd be disappointed if it wasn't my own presence and power among them, wouldn't you?" At that, the bailiff tried to contain the ensuing riot, but failed, and two hundred clones, twenty genemixes were taken to the hospital from wounds. The journalists only reported the genemixes, however. 'Clones of a single lineage fighting amongst themselves? Preposterous'
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