Does new lore overwrite the old? (Names specifically)

Danikat · December 2017

Thinking about names specifically, but it could apply to a lot of things.

I'm in the process of designing a new character, a nord, and trying to come up with a family name for her. Part of her backstory is that she's from a wealthy, important family (but not one that appears in the game), so she's a bit spoiled and has an over-inflated sense of her own abilities and importance which is definitely going to get her killed (because I'm going to take her through the main story). Anyway, that means I want her to have an actual clan or family name rather than a title/nickname.

According to UESP all nord names in Arena and Daggerfall followed the format of malename+sen - e.g. Bjersen or Torbiksen. I like that format and was planning to use it, but according to that page it has not appeared in any game since. Morrowind onwards all nord have last names like Farseer or Half-Hand or nicknames like the Raven or the Fast. Even when it's a family name it follows that format (for example the Battle-Born and Grey-Mane families in Skyrim).

So now I'm wondering if the system from Arena and Daggerfall has been essentially replaced and is no longer canon, or if both are equally valid. I know there's a lot of other contradictions between the older and newer games so I'm wondering if Bethesda/Zenimax have ever addressed this.

VaranisArano · December 2017

Elder Scrolls lore is interesting. Its not exactly hard and fast in the same way that, say, Tolkien's elven languages are.Elder Scrolls lore tends to be rather flexible, with a great many unreliable narrators and historical distortion. This is a lore universe where Cyrodiil used to be a jungle, the Dragonbreak made all endings of Daggerfall canon, Vivec reached CHIM, and this entire game takes place in an era where practically no records survived to the future.

For names, I would go with both formats being equally valid. Arena and Daggerfall were limited in scope (which seems like a weird way to describe the two largest scale games in the series...) and with large amounts of the world being generated didn't have quite the same handcrafted detail as the NPCs of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim where the lesser scale of the world meant that NPCs could be a little more detailed. In the case of Nords, Morrowind liked to use those descriptive surnames to enhance their characters' personalities. For example, you've got Hlormar Wine-Sot who pissed off the witch he was escorting and so she spelled him to sleep, stole his axe, and left him naked on the side of the road. With a name like that, you can guess why the whole thing happened.

So I suspect that with more detailed NPCs in Morrowind, the developers made a lot of changes to the name list and started using descriptive surnames. However, the format from Arena and Daggerfall is still fine. Plus, Arena and Daggerfall predate Morrowind by several in-game decades so perhaps that naming system was traditional and saw a brief comeback?

elias.stormneb18_ESO · December 2017

While the Arena/Daggerfall naming convention has definitely been abandoned, there are Nord names in newer games very similar to those. Is Skyrim there's Jenssen, aswell as the Gauldrsons, and in ESO there's a Laransdottir. Sen/son and dóttir are all words in scandinavian languages meaning son and daughter respectivelly; so Nord names ending with "-sen" would still be lore-friendly, even if they're not that common anymore.

Kierro · December 2017

I wouldn't say new overwrites anything. In a book in... Reaper's March? Maybe it's in Khnarthi's Roost. But it talks about how older Khajiit like to put their titles after their name, making it into a suffix: Zara'dro. However, many younger Khajiit prefer to put their titles as a prefix: Dro'zara. Remember, this is a thousand years before Skyrim (800 before Oblivion) So naming, historically, would be different than modern. However, many modern day names are from ancient times.

Skelfish · December 2017

This topic has been answered already, but I have an alternative to thinking of it like old lore being overwritten. Don't forget that there is an in-lore timeframe along with the real life time in between the games. Skyrim happens 1000 years after the in-game events of Morrowind, for example.
In this sense, you can assume that certain parts of every culture will have adapted or changed between Arena and Skyrim. One of these parts would be "common" naming conventions for any race. There is the Khajiit example above, which takes into account the title prefix found in Oblivion and Skyrim that is reversed in ESO.

Nord naming conventions may have changed to fit a different culture perspective over time, or even based on how other cultures (such as the Imperials) interpret/translated older names. It's a bit like foreign immigrants having their names anglicized in order to "fit in" better in America. So something like "Battle-Born" may actually have been an Imperial "translation" of a Nord name in their traditional tongue.

Shardan4968 · December 2017

It's funny that someone is confused about nord names while in Arena argonians were straight up greeks (ex. Heracles, Julacles, Neracles, Demetrian, Augustus). Let's be real here in Arena, canon is only main questline. (There wasn't even daedra!)

VaranisArano · December 2017

Skelfish wrote: »

This topic has been answered already, but I have an alternative to thinking of it like old lore being overwritten. Don't forget that there is an in-lore timeframe along with the real life time in between the games. Skyrim happens 1000 years after the in-game events of Morrowind, for example.
In this sense, you can assume that certain parts of every culture will have adapted or changed between Arena and Skyrim. One of these parts would be "common" naming conventions for any race. There is the Khajiit example above, which takes into account the title prefix found in Oblivion and Skyrim that is reversed in ESO.

Nord naming conventions may have changed to fit a different culture perspective over time, or even based on how other cultures (such as the Imperials) interpret/translated older names. It's a bit like foreign immigrants having their names anglicized in order to "fit in" better in America. So something like "Battle-Born" may actually have been an Imperial "translation" of a Nord name in their traditional tongue.

Skyrim happens 200 years after Oblivion, which happens about 6 years after TES III Morrowind. TES Arena is only roughly 30-40 years before Oblivion. Unless you meant ESO Morrowind in which case okay, its closer to a 1000 years. But seriously, there's a big difference between TES III Morrowind and ESO Morrowind.

So for the time period in development, we are looking at an in-game timeline of 28-38 years (Arena takes place over 10 years) between TES Arena and TES Morrowind. Arena and Daggerfall had the old naming system, TES III Morrowind had the new hand-designed NPCs so it got the new nordic naming system.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/elder-scrolls-online/Elder_Scrolls_Timeline

Which is not to say that I necessarily disagree with your explanation of names, its just that I'm being a lore nerd about the dates

Korah_Eaglecry · December 2017

My assumption is that naming conventions come and go like fashion. Just like in real life how certain names become very popular to name new born children and how it shifts every few years. I can imagine certain naming traditions coming in and out of fashion like sen even in Tamriel.

Of course, I would say that as it is apart of Arena that it makes it canon and unless there is something in the lore that is straight up rewriting that. Its possible that while it may not be in-vogue in ESO or other games that there would still be parents using the tradition for naming their children even if we arent seeing it wildly used.