With all due respect to the devs, I think the most appropriate thing is to refer back to the author of the cryptonote whitepaper, Nicolas van Saberhagen. (as much we all want a unit named after us; hell, who doesn't want to own a "pega" of Monero
)
We named the smallest possible current unit for bitcoin a "satoshi". It only makes sense to name the smallest possible sub-unit of Monero something like a "saber", or a "hagen", or even "gen".
In fact, "gen" is actually pretty catchy as the smallest possible unit.
So if there are 12 digits of sub-units that means that every Monero is made up of 1 trillion "gen".
Now let's say that 10,000 "gen" is a "hagen".
And 10,000 "hagen" is a "saberhagen" (perhaps called a 'saber' for short)
Then 10,000 "saber" equals one Monero.
It works out nicely, no?
edit: It works out even better when you think of it this way:
1 gen is the smallest unit, and is also 0.01% of a hagen.
1 hagen is 0.01% of a saber.
1 saber is 0.01% of a Monero.
Usually humans can visualize 1% of something pretty easily. And with a little imagination they can rationally understand tenths and hundreds of a percent, but this is where human comprehension breaks down. This system introduces a new term for every major magnitude change.
Of course, the bitoiners had this great system worked out with microbits and millibits and along came "mass marketing" and declared a millionth of bitcoin to be a
"bit".
So we may decide this and then in a few years some idiot yells, "hey u guise, wats one millionth of a Monero? A mon?" and we're like, "No, that's sounds retarded." but then everyone else is like, "No that's awesome! YAY!" and consensus wins.
