The register rules: Hádēs

A name is a chain of evidence. Hádēs is intact; the forms below are where the chain broke. The register records each break, and why — and it is equally precise about what the plain form may legitimately do.

At a Glance

• Canonical form: Hádēs
• Original script: Ἅιδης
• Pantheon: Greek
• Convention: the restored-stress convention: acute and circumflex for pitch, macrons for vowel quantity, exactly as the sources write
• False forms on record: 3
• Contested forms: 1
• Series: The Canonical Register, No. 91 of 271

The Canonical Form

The name is attested as Ἅιδης, as LSJ and Beekes record. On the evidence, it means "The Unseen One (from ἀ- + εἶδον)". The canonical transliteration is Hádēs.

Every mark is evidence, and every piece of evidence is checkable:

• a → á — Acute on alpha: the stress position, as the sources give it.
• e → ē — Eta: long epsilon: the vowel length, as the sources give it.

Where the Flattened Form Stands

The plain form hades 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: hades may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. Every mark it drops — a → á, e → ē — is a fact the sources recorded. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.

The Register of False Forms

The following forms are found in the wild — wikis, forums, even printed pages. The register lists each with its origin and its violation.

False form 1: Há́dēs

Origin: the English ear — English speakers slam the first syllable of every borrowed name (DEL-fi, MY-cene), so the accent drifts forward online.

Violation: moves the stress from a (where the Greek puts it) to Á — a different word with a different rhythm; the sources stress a and nothing else.

False form 2: Hádes

Origin: the half-restoration — well-meaning posts that keep the accent because it looks Greek and drop the macron because it looks optional.

Violation: drops the vowel length on e → ē: the quantity is as attested as the accent (Eta: long epsilon), and without it the meter of the name collapses.

False form 3: Hâdēs

Origin: the circumflex habit — writers who learned that "the little hat means Greek" and apply it wherever an acute belongs.

Violation: the source carries an acute (oxeia, a rising tone), not a circumflex (perispomene, a rise-fall): the two marks are different facts about pitch, and only the acute is attested on a.

The Contested Forms

Not every non-canonical form is false. These forms carry real scholarly support — they are recorded in the lexicon as variants, with their sources, and the register presents them honestly rather than pretending unanimity:

• Hādēs — Macron on alpha: length-preserved variant without acute. Support: LSJ, Beekes, Smyth.

The canonical form stands above the contested ones here by weight of evidence, not by decree. If the scholarship shifts, the register shifts with it — that is what "canonical" means when it is honest.

What the Address Bar Allows

IDNA 2008 permits the letters these restorations use — macrons, acutes, underdots, thorn, ogonek, the lot — and the DNS carries them as punycode (`xn--` labels). Two honest constraints remain. First, registrar inventory: the protocol permits a character; the registrar's stock decides whether the exact domain can be bought today. Second, combined marks: forms like Apṓllōn (acute stacked on a macron) are philologically ideal yet effectively untypeable on phones and unsupported across much of the registration system.

That is why the rulebook keeps a fallback hierarchy — full restoration first, then the circumflex when the source carries one, then the macron-only academic standard, then an attested variant, and only as a last resort the plain ASCII form. Every step down the ladder is still defensible; nothing on the ladder is a wrong mark. A fallback is a choice among attested forms. A false form is not on the ladder at all.

The Verdict

Hádēs is the canonical form: attested, checkable, and enforced across the temple, the lexicon, the cards, the APIs, and this register. The plain form hades is sanctioned as the fallback vehicle and nothing more. The false forms above are documented so that no reader has to take the temple's word on faith — the violations are stated, the sources are named, and the register stands open to challenge on every line.

The temple of Hádēs stands at /sites/hades/.

The Register Continues

This is one of 271 entries in the Canonical Register — the authoritative reference for every flagship temple. The temple's founding dispatch tells the name's story; its Restoration File details the marks; its Resonance File reads the archetype into the industries. The blog index holds the whole archive, and the Rulebook states the convention this register enforces.

Continue the register — previous entry: Guānyīn (read it) · next entry: Hanumān (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.