On the Names of Elves

[Dry Crackers 230]

Small folded books of only a few pages have been delivered to the major Elven libraries.

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On the Names of Elves

by Arhiln Sulicelia Caerme'onn,

Printed at Nevæhlen in the Year 1946 of Aegis.

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Being blessed with long life, the question of identity is often of first consequence to elves.  By this word identity I do not mean an unchanging characteristic fixed at birth or some other particular epoch, but rather a thing that hovers between an elf and the rest of the world:  a midpoint between his view of himself and the world's of him, with each affecting the other continually.  Grossly obvious are the evolutions in identity brought about by changes of the subject's environment or outward appearance; these hardly merit discussion.  More subtle but deeper and more profound are those changes in identity that result from a certain state of perception unmediated by any shift of the outer world.  Persons grieving, or new-charged with pride, or intentionally adapted to sociability, find their identities reflect the changed state of their inner selves, and in time these changed identities work upon those contacting the person.  Likewise the subject who is thought of kindly, or badly, by her neighbors, comes to adapt their perceptions into her view of herself, identity acting not as an absolute shield but as a breakwater, dampening and changing the forces which strike a person rather than staving them off altogether.  This identity, then, continually shifting, is necessarily under the greatest strain in Mali, as our long lives and continual flexibility of spirit and mind permit the most extensive changes of identity.  Of particular interest in this process are names, being both capable of taking form in the outer world (if only momentarily) and reflective of an inner state adopted by the person named.

Our ancestors, being in general even longer-lived than Mali of today, felt this strain all the more keenly for the greater time they were exposed to it.  However, we know that contributing to their long and comfortable though by no means languid lives was a general disinclination towards petty strife:  though the Seeds in ancient days certainly quarreled, the great and highly lethal wars which we know of today were remarkable deviations from a general policy that avoided shedding Descendant blood.  Certainly a common feature of their identity, their means of understanding the word and of being understood in turn, was the cause of their equanimity.  As we have observed, the practice of naming is of the first importance in constructing and understanding this identity.

As with so much concerning the ancients, a definitive statement of their practice of naming may never be possible.  We encounter in the historical record a great number of mononyms, though none can say whether from the records alone whether this was the general practice or applied only to the small number of historically significant elves whose names were unlikely to be confused.  Certainly long and involved names, comprising multiple parts of significance, were not the usual practice; we see not a single example of this type in the history, and certainly would expect to have at least one, were it common.  Though it is improper to consider names simply as functional appellations, a means of distinguishing persons with no ramifications for the inner state of a person, this is nonetheless a role of names, and one which is unlikely to have changed much through the years, and consideration of this functional aspect may permit deduction to give a general picture of ancient practice.  

The ancients spent their time distributed in bands of no great size:  Seeds or components of Seeds; contact, even among the several bands of one large Seed, was incidental except in wartime and certain ritual and trading seasons.  Thus each person of a band needed to be distinguished only from the other members of the band, and even within the band, a certain amount of repetition would have been easily disambiguated with use of nick-names or such designations as “elder”, “younger”, and so on.  Thus the case for single given names is strengthened.  When bands should meet, it is natural that the entire band would receive, as a further distinguishing mark, the name of their band, or perhaps that of the territory which they claimed.  The Seed-name might be used in a similar way, with interlocutors of different Seeds:  certainly it was proudly proclaimed in war and other contests, and perhaps even repurposed as an epithet, or honorific, by those interlocutors, depending on their impressions of the identity of the Seed.  Thus we have a general picture:  the single given name, augmented by sobriquets applied by the bearer’s kin, and further enhanced by a distinctive mark of territorial and Seed affiliation when necessary.  Here we see an interesting phenomenon:  a person adopts an identity, in this case the Seed-identity, which, already constructed, is present in the minds of those who are to view it.  It may seem impossible for an identity to exist, pre-constructed, without belonging to a particular mind by which it is fixed to the world, but such identities assuredly exist: any number of examples will suggest themselves to an inquiring mind.  However, the interesting philosophical consequences of this fact cannot be sufficiently addressed here and must be set aside.  Let it suffice to say that the adoption, or imposition, of any name which identifies a person as being of some particular group, cannot fail to have a profound effect on the identity of the person so identified.

The cause of the first dissolution of the Seeds will probably never be known, and indeed every year we find more evidence that it was not so complete as once we believed in the form of remnants of the ancient language, religious practice, and even relics and lineage which survive in continuous use through the millennia.  However, we certainly know that the end of the Age of Seeds also brought an end to its concomitant naming practice, for by the time of the establishment of Malinor, in general, Mali had adopted the practice of the Valah in assigning and taking names.  No great explanation is necessary here:  even those who have never lived without the resurrected Seeds are at once familiar with the common human means of identification by a given first name augmented by one or a series of “last” names, mostly patrilineal, or denoting other family affiliation.  Some other schemes are in use, more or less complicated:  Among some nations it is only the identity of the father that persists in the child, and we hear of Henrik son of Henrik, and appropriate dialectical variations.  Valah women are largely deprived of their own family names, being obliged to bear those of their husbands; while it is only the husbands whose names are guaranteed to persist in the children.  The various Valah laws of inheritance may bear on this program in ways that are best left to their advocates:  again, even the meanest persons are aware of the general outline of this naming scheme, which was also in general practice among elves for many years, and which persists in those parts of Mali society who have rejected the ancient practices in the years since they have returned to use.

In the modern age, the most notable tendency in the names of elves is again the Seed-name, the taking of which, along with the Seeds themselves, was reintroduced to general practice some centuries ago.  This effort met with great success, and the Seeds have become at times the only method of organization for the Mali'ame.  Thus it is natural that elves proclaim their Seed affiliation, not only with the customary Ilmyumier, but also by appending the name of their Seed to their own given name.  This practice has become almost universal among those Mali who take pride in their Seed and wish to establish their membership as a feature of their identity.  While laudable, the inconsistency and uneven spread of the practice has come to cause confusion.  Confusing but comprehensible are those elves who, having adopted a new Seed, yet retain the name occasioned by their previous affiliation, for identity is often slow to change.  Much more serious are a great and discreditable series of abuses brought about by the conflation of Seed-names with patrilineal names:  We hear them bestowed upon children who have not the slightest right to use them, or, worse, conjoined with the infamous hyphen to serve as the joint family name of a married couple.  While in many Seeds it is customary for children born to the Seed-members to themselves be inducted in due time, and so the bearing of a particular name may only be pre-emptive of an eventual honor, no Seed which follows the ancient practice should confer membership by right of birth alone, and thus a duty to truth requires none bear the Seed-name besides those entitled; as for the latter usage, so often struck into mailboxes and fence-posts, proclaiming the residence to be that of “Dilir’suli-Tahn’lie”, or similar nonsense, no defense against the charges of vanity and false pride seems possible.  These regrettable practices of desperate self-gilding reached their culmination in a disgusting episode taking place towards the end of the last age, wherein the name of an old and formerly distinguished Seed, much reduced by the passage of years but still possessed of dignity and honor, was tacked to the names of a great mass of undeserving persons in a transparent attempt to build a dynastic house for political purposes, following the practice of the Valah.  Fortunately, these political aspirations failed to eventuate, and the would-be dynasty dispersed, returning an old name to reputability, though not to prosperity.

Reflecting again on the existence of a group identity, an identity in the sense now familiar to us but which is not attached to any particular person, and whose existence is so perfectly illustrated by the foregoing anecdote:  for how can a name possibly be useful to a political opportunist, or disgraced by his actions, if it is not connected to a set of meanings which can be applied or removed from persons at will?—it remains only to return briefly to one of the philosophical questions earlier laid aside.  As an individual identity is worked on by its bearer and the broader world equally, with the influence of each on the other mediated by the mirage-effect of the intervening identity, so too is the form of the group identity the result of a host of influences, coming on one side from the world at large, as in the individual identity, and on the other, from the mass of all the bearers, acting through their respective personal identities of which the group identity forms a part.  Again I must disappoint the philosophers, for here my concern is the ability, and accompanying responsibility, that we each have in forming the group identities that we adopt:  chiefly, as we have seen, the Seed-name and Seed-identity.  Having already deplored the misuse of these intangible objects because of ignorance, and for purposes of self-aggrandizement and cronyism, it remains only for me to exhort their correct use, by and for the persons who have earned them.  The practice of the ancients, recounted above as carefully as history permits, is, as in so many things, the best guide.  Let us Mali cease abusing our Seed-names by treating them as Valah family names which we, being longer-lived than they, never needed.  Let us leave off the vain practice of adopting or assigning Seed-names representing identities to which the bearer has no affiliation.  Above all, let us guard against the use of our Seed-identities, which we all aid in constructing, from one side or another, for establishing political dynasties or other systems of corrupt influence.  In our names we carry the greatest inheritance left to us by the ancients, and we are obligated to preserve it, through proper use, for the sake of our blessed children and all future generations.

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[Rayalia 285]

A certain pink haired 'ame eventually comes across such folded pages upon her monthly exploration of the libraries. She scans the words, then properly reads them, and eventually, a small, rare smile crosses over her marred features. It had been quite a long time since she'd known of any others that held similar views to her own.

 

A daughter of the Arvellon, though not an Arvellon herself, quirks a brow at her father's written words, befuddlement crossing her features. "... Looks about right, ti, but were they supposed t' be different? Old people traditions are weird."

[Jaslaw 272]

#NameYourElfsAfterVegtables