Learn English – What’s the opposite of “singleton”

Clone Source

Example 1

Human Cloning: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy

(...) Consent of the clone source: a key regulatory issue is whether the clone source - the source of the DNA - must consent to the cloning. (...)

Example 2

Liberty, Identity, and Human Cloning

Eugenic: the meaning of the chosen genome.-A second situation involving rearing a child cloned with the consent of a third party clone source arises when a couple who is coitally fertile (or who could reproduce noncoitally with their own gametes) prefers instead to bear and rear a child who is the clone of another person. The clone source could be a parent or family member, a friend, or another whose genes they find desirable. Their claim is that they will have and rear a child only if it is cloned from the DNA of the source they have in mind. Does their procreative liberty include the right to clone and rear?

Now, if the source itself is a clone, I'd say we could refer to it as the clone source's source.

Note: If you're writing scifi, I'd suggest source and grandsource, but the latter I just made up.

Candidate for baptism or baptismal candidate is probably the closest you will come to a universal term for people being baptized, but this would be a somewhat formal/technical usage, and has its own problems.

Baptism has different theological significance among the various branches of the faith, and takes place at different stages of initiation into the faithful. Notably, there are traditions which practice infant baptism (e.g. Presbyterians) and those which restrict it to adults (e.g. Anabaptists); and there are some which require baptism by immersion (dunking) (e.g. Mormons), and those which permit baptism by infusion/affusion (pouring) or aspersion (sprinkling) (e.g. Catholics). But even where there is agreement of practice, there is often underlying difference in theology, the details of which are well beyond the scope of this stack; see Christianity.SE.

In most Christian traditions, baptism is primarily a rite for infants or children. The person or people being baptized are readily identified by their minority. No special term is therefore needed— the person to be baptized is simply the infant, the child, the baby, etc.

In Catholicism, a catechumen is an adult who has never been baptized into any Christian faith, who undergoes study and spiritual preparation for initiation into the Church. A candidate, in contrast, is someone who has been baptized but has not come into full communion with the Church through the sacraments of Holy Eucharist and Confirmation. Nevertheless, the 1997 Catechism of the Catholic Church does use the term candidate to refer to all receiving the sacrament, e.g.

Baptism is performed in the most expressive way by triple immersion in the baptismal water. However, from ancient times it has also been able to be conferred by pouring the water three times over the candidate's head.

Candidates may thus be ambiguous.

Another liturgical church, the Church of England, uses candidate as the broad term, but its Liturgy of Baptism— under Presentation of the Candidates— asks

People of God, will you welcome these children/candidates and uphold them in their new life in Christ?

(emphasis in original), indicating that children is accepted in place of candidates when appropriate.

In credobaptist traditions, one is baptized only after making a profession of faith. As such, candidate is not quite accurate, at least in cases where baptism is viewed as symbolic and not sacramental. By a loose analogy, if you retire from work on Wednesday and throw a retirement party on Saturday, you are not a "candidate" for retirement in the intervening days; the party is not what makes you officially retired.