Hackanonical is my new favorite word. Thank you for that.

IIRC oxen is a vestigial dual (not plural) form, so quite appropriate.

According to http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ox -- "Oxen is the only true survival in Mod.Eng. of the O.E. weak plural."

From what I can tell, it looks like OE nouns could have either "strong" or "weak" declensions, and this is different from the dual form. Someone on another forum claims that "brethren" is another example.

may well be true, my source is an old State of the Onion talk from Larry Wall, which although a linguist is probably not the most qualified in the world :)

So four ox = oxenen?

"Alices", by analogy with "codex".

It's a Greek name, so I'd go with that for plurals, rather than German or Latin templates.

Alexes is the best of the bunch.

Damn Google http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=Hackanonical

Sorry about that, just made it up on the fly. Hacker(-speak) + canonical (form) portmanteau.

Alexen is awesome. I just added it to the header. (Hackanonical is even more awesome, but it sadly doesn't fit there.)

Thanks for the words!

Alex K

PS I appreciate how strong codex/codices example is, but, well, Alices, not so much.

Take Alex's, Alexi, Alexim, Alexen, and boxen out back to be euthanized along with the awful virii and anything else that would lead Cory Doctorow to chortle while typing.

Hackanonical, however, is without flaw. It should be in the name of this site!

As in regexen. :)

And Socksen.