Attempting to Make Sense of the Clones’ Designation Numbers or: How to Lose Your Mind in Five Easy Steps
When I come across a problem that both interests me and doesn't make sense (like how the GAR is organized), I will obsess over it until I've come up with something that's at least somewhat logical.
Enter the 'CT/CC/ARC/etc.+numbers' designations for the clones.
I know the clones' designations have no true logic to them, and that the various people involved in naming them obviously had no system to follow. And my idea isn't bulletproof, as you'll see, but I needed something for my own fics.
At first I tried to come up with a way for the numbers to indicate dates in ATC (After Treaty of Coruscant) plus birth order, but that doesn't work at all. Then, because I've adopted three ex-racing greyhounds over the years, I started thinking about the system used for their right ear tattoos, but discarded it. I even considered that Kaminoans only have 6 fingers so maybe they'd have a base-6 number system, but that didn't help me either.
Then I realized that clones are just products to the Kaminoans. So, SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) numbers, which are used in real world businesses to track inventory, would make sense.
Most clones' designations start with letters like CT/CC/ARC/etc, then a hyphen, then four numbers. But there are plenty that don't follow that formula, like CT-782 (Hevy), CT-0000/1010 (the 501st's Fox), or CT-27-5555 (Fives before he got his ARC designation, ARC-5555), so it's frustratingly inconsistent. Here's a rundown of the possible explanations I've come up with for the myriad inconsistencies:
1. First, suppose that most clones' SKU format is 'letters, hyphen, four digits, hyphen, four more digits.' Obviously the Kaminoans would be very particular about how the designations are formatted, but perhaps the clones themselves sometimes use slashes and hyphens interchangeably? That means that CT-0000/1010 could also be written CT-0000-1010. But then you have Jai'galaar, or CT-55/11-9009, whose designation gives me a headache. It's possible the designations could be formatted as CT-xx(slash or hyphen)xx(slash or hyphen)xxxx? This is the part of my theory that bugs me the most, but thankfully it doesn't come up much.
2. Next, it makes sense that the clones tend to drop the first four digits because eight numbers is a ridiculous mouthful. It's also possible that they often drop zeros from the beginnings of both number sequences. So CT-27-5555 would be CT-0027-5555, CT-782 would be CT-xxxx-0782, etc.
(I'll be the first to admit that these first two ideas are the weakest. I honestly don't recall which characters recite the various designations. If it's a clone or even one of the trainers using the abbreviated designations, the ideas work well enough, but if a Kaminoan refers to one of the clones in such a way, that could potentially poke holes in the theory.)
But, moving on to how the 'inventory' numbers determined:
3. What if the first two digits are related to whatever DNA configuration the clone belongs to? We know of at least a few discrete configurations, such as those used for the Null-class ARCs and later the Alpha-class ARCs (being prototypes, their designations, like N-5 or Alpha-17, don't fit into my scheme). I imagine the Kaminoans were always tinkering with these configurations as they discovered how to manipulate traits they considered more or less desirable, so they probably created many slightly different DNA configurations over the years, which we could call 'generations.'
4. Then we have the next two digits. This could indicate the lot number for that generation. For example, you might have CT-06(the 6th generation)37(the 37th lot in that generation), or CT-0637-xxxx.
5. Finally, the last four digits could indicate decanting order. So, CT-1743-9561 would be generation 17, 43rd lot, and the 9,561st clone decanted from that lot.
You might be wondering if the numbers work. The Kaminoans wouldn't want there to be two clones running around with the exact same designation, so does this system accommodate the number of clones they created for the war?
As far as I can tell, it does. If you assume that there could be up to 100 (00-99) generations, and up to 100 (00-99) lots in each generation, that comes to 10,000 possible combinations. But when you add on the last four digits (0000-9999), which allow for up to 10,000 clones in each lot, you get a final total of 100,000,000 for CTs alone. I think it's very likely that the first batches after the Nulls and Alphas, which probably had a lower viability rate than later generations, didn't utilize the full 0000-9999 of the last four digits. Even taking that into account, though, there's still a ton of wiggle room between how these numbers work out and even the highest estimates I've seen for how many clones were created on Kamino (including 10 years' worth of cadets still being trained at the end of the war). And if the Kaminoans reached the limit of this system, with over 100,000,000 clones, I imagine they could add an additional number to the 'generations' section, so the format would be CT-xxxxx-xxxx. That might mess with their recordkeeping, but this is Star Wars, so we'll just go with it.
There is an extreme outlier from Legends: CT-282-SD00001-983725138, but I'm not even touching that insanity (*insert "I pretend I do not see it" meme*).
And of course we have Echo. To quote Echo's Wookieeepedia entry (emphasis mine):
In the episode "The Bad Batch," Echo was officially identified by his clone trooper designation, CT-1409. However, in the Star Wars sourcebook Ultimate Star Wars, released after the premiere of The Clone Wars Legacy episodes, Echo was identified by a different designation number, CT-21-0408. This number was taken from Echo's designation number seen on his training armor in the episode "Clone Cadets," where it was fashioned on his leg. The number was never spoken aloud in the episode, although other cadets—like Hevy (CT-782), for example—did have their numbers spoken, which matched their training armor. In the StarWars.com Databank, Echo is also identified as CT-1409, but this article assumes that CT-21-0408 is also canon.
Whyyyyyy?
Was he mixed up with another clone when they were little and the Kaminoans didn't realize it until later?? Are some clones assigned different numbers after they're deployed?? And why wasn't he referred to as ARC-xxxx in season 7, since both he and Fives became ARCs before that??
Well, @crystalshard‘s theory, which I love and is now my headcanon, is that "Echo was the subject of a stocktaking error in which a very tired Kaminoan scientist tagged Echo's arm chip incorrectly, and it took Rex forever to fix the admin error. Never assume malice when incompetence is a more likely answer."
I keep imagining poor Rex being very confused when he notices the discrepancy. Then for months, he and maybe Jesse spend what little free time they have sifting through files, comming COs in other battalions, and listening to the mind-numbing Kamino cloning facility's hold music for hours while trying to sort this out.
So, that's what I've got. It's what I use when I need to make up designations for characters in my fics who don't already have a canon one, and if anyone else wants to use it or modify it, feel free.
hi! i saw your post about clone trooper designations and thought you might be able to help me. hopefully we'll find out once the bad batch series comes out but in the meantime im trying to figure out designation numbers for the bad batch to use in a fic. do you have any ideas about how they could look?
Hi! :D
Ah, cool, thanks for reading my obsessive headcanons, haha! I haven’t thought much about the bad batch, but my guess is that they’re CTs who just happened to have those “desirable mutations” mentioned in the show.
As for the numbers, if you go by the rough system I came up with, there’s really a ton of flexibility. My headcanon is that pretty much all clones after the first few prototype generations, like the Nulls and Alphas, have the letter-letter-xxxx-xxxx designation format. So by that logic, the oldest clones would have the smallest numbers in their first xxxx. Cody’s might be, for example, CC-0603-2224 (6th DNA configuration, 3rd batch from that configuration, and the 2224th clone from that batch [incidentally, my sad headcanon is that a LOT of the first batches didn’t survive to “adulthood” because it took a while for the Kaminoans to tweak the process to get higher survival rates. Additionally, even though in TCW we only know of a couple handfuls of CCs, there had to have been thousands of them, many of whom probably died on Geonosis]).
All that aside, since most clones seem to only use the last 4 numbers of their designation, you can basically give them any 4-digit combination there. That’s what I’ve been doing for stuff I’m writing in the RCAU, anyway. :)
