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If we have a set of entities which are [metaphorical] children of a given [metaphorical] parent what should we call them?

(Here, 'entity' can refer to anything.)

Are they 'children entities' or 'child entities'?

Edwin Ashworth
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michal.jakubeczy
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    *Entity, like object*, is not the sort of word we would use for children, parents, etc. – FumbleFingers May 04 '18 at 11:42
  • @FumbleFingers unless you're a software engineer, and you deal with killing children and other nasty things all the time! – Nicola Sap May 04 '18 at 11:57
  • They began (and continue) their existence as children of two parents. – Nigel J May 04 '18 at 13:23
  • @Nicola Sap: As a C++ programmer myself, I've often referred to child/parent objects/classes. To my mind the naming of software functions and objects is Off Topic anyway, but to the extent that there is a valid "syntactic" issue here, it's been covered many times before. – FumbleFingers May 04 '18 at 13:40

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It's "child entities".

This is a case of noun adjunct (or attributive noun), and it doesn't have to match the grammatical number of the noun it combines to. In this case, I have only encountered examples of (singular) "child" + (plural) <noun>.

I can give several examples from software manuals, since the concept of "children" exists in the field of computer programs as "entities that inherit some features from another entity".

Blender manual: "child particles", "child paths"

Javascript reference: "child nodes"

Gnome manual: "child classes"

It's possible to find occurrences of "children nodes" in the documentation of smaller projects or in support forums. But in the few examples I've found, also "child nodes" is used within the same page (example).

I would say that "parents entities" doesn't sound correct after all, but as it's been pointed out in the comments this isn't necessarily a valid argument.

Nicola Sap
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  • Are you saying that 'child entity/entities' is idiomatic in some register? If so, you need to give supporting evidence. Attributive nouns are usually in the singular form, but certainly don't need to be (sports car // dogs home // services manager // systems analyst // working mens club [usually without an apostrophe nowadays]). And there is no guarantee that a couplet is idiomatic (grandparent entity // rooibos pot). – Edwin Ashworth May 04 '18 at 15:59
  • @EdwinAshworth I've added some examples – Nicola Sap May 05 '18 at 08:28
  • Just as a discussion prompt: I believe that there is something inherently different between the topic of this question and your examples. Child entities – as in entities that share features with their parent entities – are not entities about children, but entities that are children. On the other hand, dogs home, services manager, systems analyst are things and activities related to dogs, services and systems respectively, but they aren't literal dogs, services and systems. – Nicola Sap May 05 '18 at 08:35
  • Ah. Like FF above, I was taking 'child entity' to mean 'child'. I once came across a use of 'mule unit' to mean 'mule' in militaryspeak. But this corresponds rather to what dictionaries label an adjectival usage for 'daughter': << ... adj.
    1. Possessing the characteristics of a daughter; having the relationship of a daughter. /
    2. Of or relating to a cell, organelle, or other structure produced by division or replication: daughter cell; daughter DNA. /
    3. Produced by or ...
     – Edwin Ashworth May 05 '18 at 09:16
  • resulting from the decay of a radioactive element: daughter atom; daughter nuclide. >> {AHD} No dictionary I've looked in licenses the corresponding use of 'child', which leads me to the conclusion FF comes to that this is at present confined to the software domain. – Edwin Ashworth May 05 '18 at 09:16