Inspired by the designation of Nimoy in the new Trek film as “Spock Prime” - what comes after prime if I wanted there to be several Spocks? Wiki says “double prime” and “triple prime” but this seems to be for a different sense of the term, and also extremely inelegant. Is there an alternative? Two particular examples:
When naming alternate versions of the same things, or ordered things in the same category such as a series of clones Kyle’ and Kyle’’ and Kyle’’’ etc, or planets: Geddi Prime, Geddi…?
When used in the same way but as an adjective - the prime object, the ? object…etc. I guess one could say primary, secondary, tertiary but that has a slightly different meaning doesn’t it? Is there a similar list starting with prime?
The latin terms for first, second, third, etc. are prime, secunde, tertie, quarte, quinte, sexte, septime, octante, novante and decime.
I don’t think it’s a different sense of the term. It’s extremely common in mathematics and science to refer to some variant of an entity—say, x—as x′ (“x prime”). A second variant would be x″ (“x double prime”), and a third as x‴ (“x triple prime”). Given that Star Trek is in a science fiction setting, I think this mathematical terminology is exactly what this “Spock prime” designation is aping.
I’m with **Telperion **on this; use Spock Secunde, Tertie, etc. For support for this in a science fiction context, Heinlein uses Secundus and Tertius (as in Earth Secundus, Earth Tertius) as the names of the planets the Howard families move to in Time Enough for Love