Human Conger Eel

• HCE: a trigram that appears in countless phrases throughout FW, always embodying the book's male protagonist, if such he can be called. He is often affectionately referred to by readers as "Here Comes Everybody" (and Joyce himself makes several plays on this term at several points in the book) as this also creates the same inclusion as the removal of the apostrophe from "Finnegan's Wake", that we are all involved in the cycles implied in the book, just as we are all drawn into imbuing the book with meaning. HCE, as he takes many forms, is often overlooked on initial readings, but it is also noticeable that as the book proceeds and HCE's mind becomes more scrambled,his name also become scrambled, as acrostics such as "hec" or "ceh" pop up more as the book progresses, but fade closer to the end.

• Conger eel: common name for various large scaleless marine eels of the family Congridae found in the Atlantic ocean

• Conker: Conker is the name used in Britain, Ireland and some former British colonies for the nuts of the horse chestnut tree, when used in the children's game Conkers. The name comes from the nineteenth-century dialectal word conker meaning snail-shell (related to French conque meaning a conch), as the game was originally played using snail shells. The name may also be influenced by the verb "conquer", as the game was also called conquerors.