#1 - Nov. 15, 2010, 5:24 p.m.
Blizzard's own website provides a very clear and colourful outline of the basics of blood elves. You can find that here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/race/blood-elf
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Contents:
1. Naming.
1.1 Surnames
2. History , Personality and Culture
2.1 History
2.2 Personality
2.3 Culture
3. Appearance
3.1. Hair
3.1.1 Facial Hair
3.2. Eyes
3.3 Tattoos
3.4 Skin
3.5 Body structure
1. Naming
Your elf does not come from Japan. As such, any name that is Japanese derived is so very incredibly wrong. Deriving names from culture isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so long as the culture difference is not so horribly different from the setting that it stands out like a sore thumb. Which is why Japanese names don’t work. Very bland names also don’t work. Bob, Fred, Sue. These aren’t elven names, they’re human.
So, what does constitute a blood elven name? Well, let’s look at the example of NPCs:
Lyrlia
Fenissa
Ithania
Nemeth
Lethtendris
Mathredis
I’ve picked these at random from an NPC list. There are both male and female names in that list. Is it easy to tell which is which? Well, yes and no. Female elven names tend to typically ‘sound’ female, by which I mean they don’t have harsh tones and usually end with a vowel (in the cases given, ‘a’ is popular). The males names are harsher in their pronunciation, and tend not to end on a vowel. Obviously, this isn’t a set rule. ‘Lethtendris’ is female, and does not follow exactly what I have laid out. ‘Mathrendis’ is male, yet sounds surprisingly smooth on the tongue.
So are there any broad rules to look out for? Yes. Having something that rolls of the tongue is always a plus, male or female. Even the harsher sounding male names are still delicate compared to Orcish or human names because of the letters they are comprised of. They contain ‘soft’ letters, ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘s’ (etc.) as opposed to ‘harder’ letters such as ‘z’, ‘g’ and ‘d’ (etc.). Adding to the softer tones is the use of ‘th’ within a name, which seems to appear often. To give an example with some names I’ve made up:
Zugtor – This is very hard sounding, more suitable for an orc.
Salthor – Very similar, but (hopefully) a lot more sort on the tongue, and far more suitable for an elf.
1.1. Surnames
Generally speaking an elven surname is comprised of two halves:
SunSTRIDER
DawnBLADE
BloodWRATH
Etc.
You can see common themes just from these three examples. The sun (and related times of day – dawn, dusk, night etc.) is common amongst blood elves. Again, for further examples there are several lists on WoWwiki to browse through, such as this: http://www.wowwiki.com/Eversong_Woods_NPCs
It should be noted that not all elven surnames follow this format. Some (but not many) appear to remain in what I can only assume to be the Thalassian version of the word, giving them an ‘exotic’ sound. These surnames, whilst valid are often harder to think up.
