The Nibenese are from eastern Cyrodiil, Nede is an umbrella term for either early humans or aboriginal humans on Tamriel. But other than that yeah, Colovians are more likely from some Nord ancestry, strength and religion are big for them, and the Nibenese are more charismatic and had the Roman/Italian names.

Nedes are ancestral to Bretons and Imperials, both. The Reachmen are a branch of the Bretons.

Present-day Imperials are comprised of two distinct cultures; The Colovians in the west, and the Nibeneans in the east.

I think the idea with the Colovians is that they had some Nordic admixture, which expresses itself in the pragmatic, regimented and pious aspects of their character, but ultimately they are descended from the Nedes.

The confusion comes from a long-running debate in the lore community as to the origin of the Nedes themselves. Some sources described them as aboriginal to Tamriel, and some describe the Nords having descended from them.

Important lore and story also describes the Nords as having colonised from Atmora, which might imply that Nedes must have come originally from there. In fact, one of the most popular theories is that the Nedes moved in waves from Atmora over very long periods of time, resulting in the differences in descendant Nedic cultures, with the final, Ysgrammoran wave being the truly Nordic ones. Much like the Dark Ages' Migrations of Germanic peoples resulted in Franks, Saxons, Frisians etc, but only the last, late waves of the 8th and 9th centuries being "Viking".

In my view, its fans trying to make sense of the sometimes egregious retcons that happened when transitioning the classic lore into the more developed and refined more recent lore. But its an interesting topic, and could be seen as another reflection of the unreliable narrator device the Elder Scrolls is known for.

Thank you all for the information! I see that a large part of my confusion was from conflating Nedes with Nibenese!

Now I need to find the right Nedic Nibenese name and then I will create my Imperial character!

(Edited — thank you for the correction!)

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

There doesn't seem to be a big difference in naming conventions between Colovians and Nibenese by the second era (eso's timeframe).

Here's some examples of Colovians: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Legion_of_the_West_Weald

And some Nibenese: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Euraxians

If you wanted proper ancient Nedic names, you could look at some of the Craglorn stuff, like the various Skyreach locales, or Shada's Tear. Stuff like Kestic and Kuamac, but I don't know if there's any sort of established naming conventions really. Maybe lots of hard K and C sounds?

The names you give as examples seem, to my limited knowledge on the subject, much more Colovian than Nibenese. Aren’t Colovian names more often hard sounding? Of course there are Roman-style names that also have harder sounds but from what I’ve seen, most end with -us.

Still pondering over the right combination of sound, meaning and lore… Silvanus, maybe, a Roman name and fitting for a ranger, but perhaps too on-the-nose…