Thirty Names per Sign: The Zodiac Ring Labels of the Voynich Manuscript as Two-Letter Sigla, and a Falsification Pipeline for Degree-Name Cribs

Abstract

The circular "zodiac" diagrams of the Voynich Manuscript (ff. 70v-73v) carry short labels, about thirty per sign. Building on the workshop-cipher model of the companion paper, we show that these labels are not running text but a distinct register, best described as two-letter sigla of names drawn from a closed per-sign list of roughly twenty to twenty-five entries. Four independent lines of evidence converge: collapsing the labels by homophone classes or morphological cores does not increase the near-zero overlap between rings (the rings carry genuinely different names); a capacity analysis shows each label encodes essentially two plaintext letters, so full names and numerals do not fit; simulation of candidate name sources matches the observed ring diversity only for a "distinctive-word" profile of about 20-25 types per thirty; and pairs of labels within a ring share exactly one of their two parts above chance - the signature of an independently drawn prefix+suffix encoding, absent from the pharmaceutical labels, which name unique objects. We then present a reproducible three-stage pipeline for testing whether any external per-degree name list is the source of these sigla - a profile filter, a positional match under a blind-replicated degree alignment, and an anachronism control - and report a systematic negative program: seven classes of published degree-lists are rejected under pre-registered criteria. One candidate (the sanctoral of Lleida in a 1524 print) passed a Bonferroni-corrected positional test and an independent transliteration replication, yet an anachronism decomposition exposed it as a selection artifact: its signal lived entirely on feasts that postdate the manuscript. The labels are decipherable in principle but require an external, order-aligned list not yet identified; we release the falsification apparatus so future candidates can be adjudicated rather than asserted. Companion paper: "A Workshop Cipher", Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21761192. Replication package attached; also at https://voynich.site/files/voynich_replication_v1.zip . Project site: https://voynich.site