They are the same race except the "Falmer" as in monsters could be considered the inbred cousins of the snow elves.

This, and mythopoesis and the tendency of the elven races to change rather rapidly has ensured that by now we should view them as seperate races.
I prefer to call them the Falmer and the Betrayed by the way.

The Snow Elves and the Falmer are the same, but the ones who live in dwemer ruins, the blind agressive reclusive Falmer are called the Betrayed, betrayed by the dwemer who forced them to eat toxic mushrooms found in blackreach, that, according to the wiki, made them "blind and powerless", then they evolved into creatures better suited for their underground lives and blindness, but how did they get there in the first place?
when they were still "normal", they have been chased by Ysgramor's 500 Companions and many other nords, forcing them to retreat to Solstheim, where their leader was killed, some of them fled in the Dwemer cities, the ones left were killed by the nords. then the things written above happened.

I call them both Falmer

PS: They remind me a bit of HL2 stalkers.

They are both the same Race.
There are In-Game books that you have to find in the Dawnguard expansion which will briefly explain how the "Snow Elves" became the "Falmer" as we know them from the Vanilla game.
There are 4 books which tell you about the Snow Elves/Falmer through the eyes of a Snow Elf.

To sum it up though; The Snow elves were in hiding due to the Nords wiping them out. They went to the Dwemer for help, the Dwemer made a deal with them that basically states that the Snow Elves will become, more-or-less, Slaves of the Dwemer, if they wish to survive in hiding with them. The Dwemer treated them like Prisoners instead of Allies, and made them feed on poisonous mushrooms and stuff. Through years of Abuse, the Snow Elves became degenerate and started to become as you know them now.
Only a couple of hundred or so didn't go into Hiding with the Dwemer. They went to the Snow Elf Palace thing to seek refuge, although they didn't last long, and eventually died out.
As stated in Dawnguard by one of the only remaining Snow Elves, there may be more hiding away.

They started out as the same raqce, but they are that no longer.
They can possibly still interbreed, but that is no indication as most every Tamriel race can interbreed with most every other.

I'll omit the person's name out of decency, but here's one quote from yesterday that I saw:

What's unusual is that the ("civilized") Falmer/Snow Elves prefer their translated name to their original name. Very unlike other Mer.

Well, remember...

Exactly

I know that. It's strange, but surely not in a bad way. Just a bit unusual considering how other Mer prefer their merrish names (of course, the circumstances are vastly different). And well, unusual is good.

I see it this way:
All snow elves are Falmer, but not all Falmer are snow elves, so it's easier to refer to the Betrayed as Falmer, and the civilized ones as Snow Elves.

When you think about it they are a different race, calling them the same is like calling a Imperial and a Nord the same race. They both descend from Altmora but have become very different peoples.

I suppose there's no clean and clear answer to this question. See, we don't know if the designers were distinguishing between races and species, or if the terms were being used interchangeably - so their intent is unknown and semantics can become a point of confusion. We can also approach the question from a lore standpoint or a biological point-of-view.

Again, to my (biological) point of view, they are most definitely different races at the very least - there is the blind race (falmer) and the not-blind race (snow elves). This is like saying, there are black people and white people, wherein the skin tones are inherited traits. Moreover, the blinding occurred in the First Era, which was (how many years ago?) - so the fact that the falmer have been reproducing more blind falmer all those years suggests to me, from a biological standpoint, that they are probably a different species, too (again, assuming that evolution occurs in Skyrim).
Since Gelebor and Vyrthur are the only remaining members of the non-blind snow elf race, and they are both male (and Vyrthur ended up dead in my game, to boot), there is no future for the snow elves. Extinction. However, the falmer will continue to reproduce and if they are not already a distinct species, they certainly will become one over time.
But again, I can't seem to shrug off the biological perspective - that's just me, and there is nothing in the game to suggest this other than Gelebor referencing all the time that's passed and how the Betrayed (as he calls them) have changed over time. It is just as easy to say they are the same race (and thereby species, of course), and this seems to be the way the lore leans.

And lastly, of course, it really doesn't matter, does it?

Smeagol/Gollum is still a Hobbit. The Feral Falmer still have normal Falmer skin tone and could be the reason the Betrayed are becoming more Civilised, I actually felt bad about killing them.

this does not however mean that they are the same race. A white man, an asian man, and a black man. All have a mouth, stand upright, the same general abilities with some variations due to genetics favoring some over others, and different cultures. Some have better knees, some have better shins, some may grow more fat, others more muscle, some taller, some shorter, varies by each race and "sub race".

This does not make the black man, the white man, and the asian man all the same race however. They are all man, but not all asian black or white. They have a base root, and possibly even common ancestry, but that does not make them one race.



The falmer and the snow elves both have a base root of where they came from, but they're features ability understanding culture, everything is completely different. To me, it is the same as the difference between some of the other races and some of the other elves. If some elves did not become dark elves, their original race would not be called dark elves when they saw them. Only the cursed ones would be known as dark.

The origional elf race of the orcs would not be called orcs either, they would differentiate. There was an obvious change that could not be denied. You would accept the ancestral line, but you would not see each other as one and the same.

They are all elves, all Mer, but not all the same elf. Not anymore.

The genetics is no longer the same. They simply give birth to bald blind savage creatures with what seems to be a slightly different skeletal structure and muscle structure.



Some differentiate themselves purely based on culture. If you don't want to accept the genetic differences, you can at least accept the cultural ones.

And where people knew the betrayed were the falmer, they continued to give them that name.

The ones who could still comprehend the world around them understood that they were falmer, and that they both descended from the same track. But chose to choose the snow elves as their title to create differentiation.

If you play the Dawnguard expansion, an actual Snow Elf tells you what happened to his race that turned them into the Falmer as we know them today.
They are still Snow Elves, they are just Degenerate form of a Snow Elf due to years of Abuse from the Dwemer.

Gelebor (the actual snow elf) says (among other things, 'natch):

"The twisted forms you've seen didn't occur overnight. It isn't a plague or a disease that ravaged our species. The dwarves may have stolen their sight, but it took many generations for them to become what they are today. Perhaps they'll never return to their former appearance, but over the centuries, I've noticed a rise in their intellect. It's the only way they'll discover that they weren't always malignant... they were once a proud and prosperous race."
(Copied from the CK dialogue fields)

Notice the use of "species," "generations," "centuries," and "race." This, to me, suggests that the falmer are different race that has evolved, presumably, into another species.

After playing dawnguard, I think the discovery of "the betrayed" falmers being related to snow elves is relatively new. They never had any hardcoe info, until now, after the discovery of a living snow elf and even then, it seems only the dragoborn has this knowledge.

All the historians had were little tidbits here and there to try to piece together a story. Such as the statue with the "eyes of the falmer" jewels and whatever dwemer text that was discovered. If you were to walk down the street and mentioned the word falmer, a normal citizen, farmer, etc would probably think about the twisted sadistic beings that lived underground and to avoid them. They would most likely have no knowledge of them once being snow elves. That is a reason why it may seem they are classified as two different races. The name falmer has now been tainted to mean something else, and in a negative way.

Yes, but Gelebor himself also mentions about not wanting others to remember his kind as the "Falmer", he distances himself from them as his race was a proud, intelligent and civil race.
And even if the Old Falmer (Snow Elves) evolved/devolved into something else, they'de have always originated as Snow Elves. Such as, if you believe in the evolution of Monkeys to Humans, we may be Humans now, but we are just a more intelligent version of a Monkey.

He just doesn't want to bring his whole race down by referring the "Falmer" to the same kind as him. The Snow Elves may be different now, but as I've said before, they only turned into the "Falmer" due to years of Abuse from the Dwemer.

essentially, didn't your response agree with what you were responding to in that it was evolution and two separate races?

You structured it more like it was trying to disagree but the ideas I see stated are more agreeing with him, so I can't tell.

Hmm. The comment that you're referencing from Gelebor is actually weird - I'm not disputing what you're referencing, but rather what he's saying: how could anyone remember the snow elves as falmer if the snow elves existed before the falmer? It would make more sense for a falmer to be worried about being remembered as a snow elf, y'know?
Anyway...

If the falmer started off as snow elves, and then became something else, that's speciation, and that supports the notion that evolution has occurred (resulting in two species).
And just to clarify, I'm not drawing parallels between the evolution of man and the evolution of the falmer. Man did not evolve from monkeys (otherwise, there'd be no more monkeys, eh?); rather, humans and other primates share common ancestors. This is not the case with the falmer and snow elves. Some of the snow elves of old experienced an acute alteration to their physiology. This resulted in a new selective process (survival of the fittest) that would favor certain traits over time. Toss in geographic isolation (separating the blinded snow elves from the not-blinded snow elves), and you're probably going to produce a new species. It makes perfect sense from a genetic standpoint, but then again, this is a fantasy game...

From what I gathered. Most of what we know about the history of the Falmer is written by Men and other Mers since very few people besides Enthir could decipher their language and thus for someone prestigious like Gelebor, the name "Falmer" which their mortal enemies;humans and other elves who once envied them labeled the snow elves as, brings negative connotations about them. Snow elf sounds relatively simplistic and comes off as something similar and generic like Wood elf, dark elf or High elf and doesn't bring to mind images of a bunch of savage devolutionized creatures that came from a once highly advanced race. It's the same reason why the fearsome and strong Orcs don't like being called Corrupt Elves since they don't probably don't like their history being associated with magic wielding and a less physically strong race.

pretty much what the last two had said is how I see it.

We only meet two of them though. Besides, they rarely talk to other peoples. Speaking Tamrielic would be unusual for them unlike most elves and they could assume that translating their name is appropriate. Otherwise it would be like a Briton saying "Ich bin Briton" in Germany.

And just becaue the're violent and morlocky, doesn't mean the're not human any longer. Morlocks in The TIme Machine were the less degenerate strain in some ways. I know we're comparing them to other people in Tamriel, not elois, but understand how difficult it would be to effectively study the culture of a very aggressive race with good hearing.

The chimer were changed by Azura because the Tribunal refused to acknowledge her power as a Daedra Lord. Thus she warped the Chimer into the Dunmer, leaving the Tribune alone to see what they themselves had done to their race.

Where as the Falmer of old sought help from the Dwemer to fight against the Nord threat. When they agreed, the Falmer had also agreed to assist The Dwemer in return. What happened after is the Dwemer had betrayed the Falmer into slavery and and had forced them to eat toxic mushrooms, combine that with 2the era's Living under ground and they become twisted and blind with a deep hatred for every other race