# What comes after prime?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-prime/496934>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 19, 2009, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-prime/496934 "2009-05-19T05:41:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-prime/496934/1 "2009-05-19T05:41:53Z")

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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?

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**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-prime/496934/2 "2009-05-19T06:06:38Z")

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The latin terms for first, second, third, etc. are prime, secunde, tertie, quarte, quinte, sexte, septime, octante, novante and decime.

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**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-prime/496934/3 "2009-05-19T10:03:24Z")

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> [@jackdavinci](#):
>
> 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.

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.

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**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-prime/496934/4 "2009-05-19T12:32:55Z")

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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_

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**Author:** ![Sigene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df788c/32.png) [@Sigene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigene)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-prime/496934/5 "2009-05-19T12:41:23Z")

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I would use

Spock 1.0; 2.0; 3.0 etc