It's no secret that phage-likes have lots of different designs. Some might call this inconsistency, but I like to think of it as diversity. In this webpage I will attempt to design a system for naming phage-likes in varying levels of detail.
Let's define a problem space. The most obvious property is number of legs, and then number of arms. There's also the number of eyes, and if it has a mouth. Then there's eye arrangement, circularly around the head or in a circle on the face. Also if the mouth is on top of the head or not. Then to finish off the obvious ones, there's if they have cat eyes or not.
But there's more parameters than that! Starting with the legs, there's the knee height offset (0 when the knees and hips are level, negative when the knees are below the hips, and positive when the knees are above the hips like they usually are). There's the leg length, the leg segment count, and the angle distribution. Usually they're distributed evenly around a circle, but sometimes they cluster to the sides. Then there's the foot radius, the distance the feet lie from the center. There's also arm segment count and arm length, and their hands can be anything.
We could sit here all day thinking of phage parameters. That's why I'm going to make a bunch of different systems for different levels of detail.
The system so simple, I've used it before without formalizing it. You just care about leg count:
| 3 Legs | Triphage |
| 4 Legs | Tetraphage/Phage |
| 5 Legs | Pentaphage |
| 6 Legs | Hexaphage |
| 7 Legs | Septaphage |
| 8 Legs | Octophage |
Etcetera etcetera.
Let's bump things up a notch and care about leg AND arm counts. Use the table below and append that as a prefix to the system from detail level 1. "Brachus" means arm in latin, and a dash means "no space". A 6 legged 6 armed phage-like can be called a hexabrachus hexaphage or an isohexaphage.
| 0 Arms | Nullabrachus |
| 2 Arms | No Prefix/Dibrachus |
| 3 Arms | Tribrachus |
| 4 Arms | Tetrabrachus |
| 5 Arms | Pentabrachus |
| 6 Arms | Hexabrachus |
| [Leg Count] Arms | Iso- |
Let's care about arm segments too. Add "tri" to the start if it has 3 arm segments, "tetra" if it has 4 arm segments, etc. Don't mess with this if it has 2 arm segments. If it has 2 arms, this forces it to be "dibrachus".
Instead of caring about leg and arm counts, let's care about leg counts and face stuff! This works the same as the last one. If it ends in a dash, no space, and you put this before the name given by detail level 1.
| One Eye | Monoculus |
| Two Eyes | No Prefix |
| Three Eyes | Trioculos |
| Four Eyes | Tetroculos |
| Five Eyes | Pentoculos |
There's two common eye arrangements. Radially, around the head, and radially, on the face. On the face is the default so it doesn't get a prefix, but if it goes around their head, append "circum-" to the start of the eye count prefix. If they lack a mouth, append "mouthless" to the start. Unless they have more then 3 eyes, then mouthless is the default. Then you append "mouthed" to the start if they have one. Also, if they have cat eyes, cat mouth, or tail, append "feline" to the start.
Use both of the previous detail levels in tandem, B then A. Like the guy on the right in comic 10 is a "tetroculos triphage".
Let's focus on their leg arrangement.
| Hips below knees | No prefix |
| Hips level with knees | Infra- |
| Hips above knees | Ultra- |
Append "-podal" to the end of those, and then choose the next prefix to add to the beginning of that.
| Straight Legs | No Prefix |
| Curved legs | Curvi- |
| Three leg segments | Tri- |
| Four leg segments | Tetra- |
If they have hips below the knees and more than two leg segments, this won't make good results. "Tripodal" does not sound like "three segmented". So you throw in the "segmenta" prefix. So it would be "trisegmentapodal".
Some phages have legs that go near straight out covering a wide area, and some have legs that stay very close to their bodies. Use the narrow and wide prefixes accordingly. Lastly let's define one more prefix, used when the legs are mostly spread to the sides rather than radially symmetric. This prefix will be "bilateral". It goes after the prefix mentioned previously. I should've explained these in the opposite order.
Having curved legs and having more than 2 leg segments are generally mutually exclusive, so this system treats them as such. So if a 6 legged phage has curved legs with hips held high above the knees and feet that reach far out and are clustered to the left and right, it's called a wide bilateral curviultrapodal hexaphage. In reality, all legs curve a bit, so they need to curve above a certain threshold.
Use the system described in 3B, and then append 3A instead of 1. So [stature][eyes][arms][legs]. Then append "winged" to the start if they have wings, and "fanged" if they have fangs. If they have wings, fangs, and ears, you call them bat like instead. This is the final level of detail, for now.
If you see comic 5, and notice the ?5 in the url, you may be tempted to type ?6 instead. Well the correct next url is ?10, but if you fail to realize that, you're met with hexus, the seximal loving phage-like. He's a tetrabrachus phage, or an isophage. Wow, even with detail level 4 like I did there, it optimizes away a lot of stuff by being default. Literally the most default phage would be called "phage" even with detail level 4.
In comic 1, a phage and a mouthed trioculos nullabrachus hexaphage talk about the future of the webcomic.
In comic 3, a wide phage warns a narrow nullabrachus hexaphage about a falling tiger.
In comic 4, a feline phage and a phage talk about sexuality.
In comic 5, an isotriphage is trapped in a jar.
In comic 10, a wide nullabrachus hexaphage learns about a narrow infrapodal tetroculos triphage's new game project.