Elective Semantectomy

The Elective Semantectomy was a temporal engineering procedure by which a member of the Great Houses could remove their true name from history and replace it with an impersonal title of their choosing.

In most cases, this was done to protect a bloodline from embarrassment due to association with a renegade member, (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil) as the full names of many Houseworlders included the name of their Great House. (PROSE: Lungbarrow, The Book of the War, Against Nature, AUDIO: Body Politic, Panacea)

Renegade Time Lords whose names were in the form of impersonal titles included the Doctor, (TV: An Unearthly Child) the Monk, (TV: The Time Meddler) the Master, (TV: Terror of the Autons) the Rani, (TV: The Mark of the Rani) Morbius during his time as the General, (PROSE: Warmonger) the Interfering Nun, (PROSE: Shada) the Grandfather, (PROSE: Interference, The Book of the War) the Imperator, the War King, (PROSE: The Book of the War) the Hussar, (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil) the Clocksmith, (AUDIO: The Eighth Piece) the Magician, (PROSE: Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma) the Eleven, (AUDIO: The Eleven) the Corsair, (TV: The Doctor's Wife) the Heretic, (AUDIO: The Two Masters) the Player, (AUDIO: The Plague of Dreams) and the Dark Citizen. (AUDIO: Dark Universe)

Some of the first members of the Great Houses to shed their names and take on new ones were actually the Mappers who first explored the Spiral Politic after the anchoring of the thread, who all went insane sometime after finishing their work. However, instead of the "titles and stuff" which typified later Renegades, they chose "really stupid names" (in Intrepid's opinion) based on a timekeeping theme, such as Astrolabe or Pendulum. (PROSE: Going Once, Going Twice)

Morbius, sometimes considered the "First Renegade", (PROSE: Still Need a Title!) operated under the name of "the General" during his exile from Gallifrey in his first incarnation. This allowed Gallifrey a window of plausible deniability about whether "the General's" intergalactic crimes were Gallifrey's responsibility, and thus, whether they had a duty to intervene. Eventually, however, the Doctor convinced them that the General and Morbius were one and the same, and they sent him to intervene. (PROSE: Warmonger) After his execution and survival, the tyrant returned to calling himself simply "Morbius". (TV: The Brain of Morbius, AUDIO: The Vengeance of Morbius)

During the War in Heaven, some Homeworlders volunteered to undergo Semantectomy before being stationed among the lesser species, due to fears that adopting a local name might lead to conceptual contamination. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil) Likewise, during the Last Great Time War, Time Lords very much in service of orthodox Gallifrey were also known to bear such "titles" instead of ordinary names, including the Visionary (TV: The End of Time) and the General. (TV: Hell Bent) Even before the Time War, K9 Mark I's overseer in Gallifrey High Command was known as simply the Space Controller. (PROSE: K9 and the Zeta Rescue)

Before the Doctor left Gallifrey, he broke his name into thirty-eight pieces. During his travels, he spread them throughout the universe. (PROSE: Return of the Living Dad) In one of the versions of the Doctor's past, the Doctor's father erased both of their names from history. (PROSE: Unnatural History)

After the Woman and the Patriarch of Stillhaven dissented to 's plan for the Ultimate Sanction during the Last Great Time War, (TV: The End of Time, PROSE: Lords and Masters) Rassilon had the Woman's name erased from time. (PROSE: A Brief History of Time Lords)

Professor H Lennistein wrote about the Elective Semantectomy in his 31441 book The Great Houses And Us. (PROSE: Weapons Grade Snake Oil)

When River Song expressed scepticism as to the Eleventh Doctor's uncle being known simply as the Uncle, the Doctor described it as "a Time Lord thing." (GAME: The Eternity Clock)