Stribog — the one true spelling, and the forms that fail it
Evidence dossier 459 — Stribog. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Stribog
- Original script: —
- Pantheon: Slavic
- Convention: the tradition’s own scholarly transliteration standard
- False forms on record: 0
- Contested forms: none attested
- Series: The Canonical Register, No. 459 of 548
The Evidence
Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The tradition's record preserves this name in its romanized scholarly form: Stribog — no older script survives to transcribe, so the canonical content is the exactness of the spelling itself.
Exhibit 2 — the flattened form. The plain form stribog differs from the canonical Stribog only by convention of display — case, not content. It is acceptable everywhere: in legacy systems, in plain-text citation, in the DNS itself. What is not acceptable is what follows in the register: respellings that change the letters, not just their case.
Exhibit 3 — the physical record. No artifact, building, image, or inscription can be tied to Stribog. Unlike Perun's Peryn' enclosure or Veles's Novgorod street, the wind-god left no footprint in the ground, and the destruction of 988 swept away whatever shrine the Kyiv hill may have held. Wind and storm imagery on medieval jewelry and amulets — whirlwind stamps, storm-bird pendants — is sometimes laid at his door, but the attributions are decorative rather than demonstrated, and nothing bears his name. The Slovo's 'grandsons of Stribog' remains his only monument: a line of verse that has outlasted every temple in the pantheon, copied in more than a hundred manuscripts of the national epic and read aloud in classrooms eight centuries after the last wind was officially his.
Exhibit 4 — the continuing record. Stribog's legacy is almost entirely onomastic and literary. The Slovo's phrase 'Stribog's grandsons' entered every anthology of Old Rus' literature and every schoolroom, so that his name survives more widely read than those of gods with far richer cults.
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: the tradition’s own standard. 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 Stribog: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form stribog is the same name in another register of display — always acceptable. 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 /stribog/ holds the canonical form.
The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 6 cited sources — Primary Chronicle / Povest' vremennykh let, s.a. 988, Slovo o polku Igoreve (The Tale of Igor's Campaign), Gieysztor, Aleksander, Mitologia Słowian (1982).
The Register Continues
This is one of 548 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: Sphínx (read it) · next entry: Stýx (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.