Unfortunately Jets/Rubies sounds gendered to a lot of people: while "Jet" is a jemstone, it's also an engine, a plane, sports team, and a fictional gang, all more male-ish than female-ish.  And "Ruby" is a commonish female name and gemstones are more associated with women than men.

There's also a lot of benefit in having terms with "L" and "R" to tie the role names to the roles.

It's definitely harder for experienced dancers and callers to switch from Ladies/Gents to Larks/Robins than to Jets/Rubies, but as someone who helped their dance switch over (and who considered Jets/Rubies at the time) people got the new terms pretty quickly.  It's a total non-issue at our dance now.

Jeff

On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 10:47 PM Amy Cann via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
I LIKE THIS!
I hereby nominate "jets and rubies" as the likeliest contender, far
outshining my own personal fallback, suns-and-moons.

And btw, I'm absolutely seeing "jets" in my mind as black shiny beads,
not flying machines.

On 2/13/23, Michael Fuerst via Contra Callers
<contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> jets/rubies might be the best solution several reasons:
> (1) no relation to gender roles,
> (2) sound like gents and ladies, satisfying those who cognitively have
> difficulty associating larks and robins with the corresponding roles.
> (3) easier and faster to say.   Jets, unlike larks, has no hard consonant.
> Rubies has a hard consonant "b", but the sound of the "u" leaves one's lips
> and tongue positioned perfectly  to utter the "b". (This is a benefit to new
> callers, who often have difficulty prompting on time.)
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