There’s no way I can talk comprehensively about this series, so for now I’m just going to keep a running list of different things I notice each time I read them. This time (2/2023), it was how the many names for JEDD Mason echoes the apophatic naming of God, a classical theological strategy of the “negative” naming, an effort to call God by every time, thereby acknowledging and preserving God’s transcendence of all of them.
I mean, Jehovah is one of the names, as is Ἄναξ (the title Anax, i.e. lord) and Tai-kun. It doesn’t get more obvious than that. But there’s also Mike ( Micromegas), Jedd, Jagmohan, Xiao Hei Wang… every hive, every language, nearly every person has their own name for him, alien or god-like or neither or both, and it’s a brilliant touch.
Per Ada Palmer, her favorite name and the closest thing to a true name:
I tend to cycle around and use whatever name the other characters I’m thinking about or talking about at the time would use for Him. My favorites, and the closest thing to a true name, are the kinds of things Mycroft starts calling him in/after the chapter in Perhaps the Stars called “An Alphabet for Strangers.”