The canonical register: AhuraMazdā

Evidence dossier 008 — AhuraMazdā. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.

At a Glance

• Canonical form: AhuraMazdā
• Original script: 𐬀𐬵𐬎𐬭𐬀 𐬨𐬀𐬰𐬛𐬁
• Pantheon: Zoroastrian
• Convention: Avestan scholarly transliteration as the liturgies are edited
• False forms on record: 1
• Contested forms: none attested
• Series: The Canonical Register, No. 8 of 287

The Evidence

Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The attested form is 𐬀𐬵𐬎𐬭𐬀 𐬨𐬀𐬰𐬛𐬁, from the tradition's own record. The canonical transliteration is AhuraMazdā.

Exhibit 2 — the preserved marks. a → ā (Macron: long a). Each is verifiable against the sources named in the attestation.

Exhibit 3 — the flattened form. The plain form ahuramazda is not false — it is a fallback, and the register is exact about what that means. In systems that cannot carry diacritics (legacy databases, older tooling, parts of the address-bar pipeline) the flattened form is the accepted vehicle, and the rulebook names it explicitly as the final rung of the fallback hierarchy: full restoration first, circumflex where attested, macron-only by the academic standard, an attested variant, and only then plain ASCII.

What the fallback status forbids is promotion: ahuramazda may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. Every mark it drops — a → ā — is a fact the sources recorded. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.

Exhibit 4 — struck from the record: AhuraMazda. Origin: the publisher compromise — older books and hurried websites that print the "English equivalent" as if it were the name itself. Grounds: every substitution here (ā→a) is a romanization of convenience, not an attested spelling — it teaches the reader to guess, not to read.

Exhibit 5 — the physical record. AhuraMazdā is invoked in Achaemenid royal inscriptions at Bisotun, Persepolis, Naqsh-e Rustam, and Susa, usually in the Old Persian form Auramazdā. The Apadana reliefs at Persepolis show the king in ritual gestures beneath the winged-disk symbol. Zoroastrian fire temples (atešgāhs) from the Sasanian and later periods preserve the cult of fire as his visible presence. Avestan manuscripts, copied in India and Iran, transmit the Gāthās and the liturgical corpus.

Exhibit 6 — the continuing record. AhuraMazdā is the enduring name of God in Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest continuously practiced religions. His call to 'good thoughts, good words, good deeds' remains the religion's central ethical formula.

The Convention's Own History

Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: Avestan scholarly transliteration as the liturgies are edited. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.

The Protocol's Position

Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.

The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.

The Verdict

Case closed on AhuraMazdā: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form ahuramazda rides as the sanctioned fallback — and stays in that lane. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /sites/ahuramazda/ holds the canonical form.

The docket for this ruling: 1 false form ruled against, AhuraMazda first on the docket; 1 preserved mark verified: a → ā; no contested forms attested.

The Register Continues

Entry 8 of 287 in the Canonical Register. Around it: the temple's founding dispatch, the Restoration File on the marks themselves, the Resonance File on the archetype at work, and the Rulebook behind all of it.

Continue the register — previous entry: Aganjú (read it) · next entry: Aígyptos (read it).

The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.