Romans referred to the dawn star as "Lucifer"...Latin for "light bearer". The planet Venus.

Venus was the Roman goddess of love, but only to educated Romans. The illiterate 90% of the populace simply called the planet Venus, the dawn star, "Lucifer".

That "Lucifer" means "Satan" is a "lay" concept drawn from a passage in the Old Testament referring to the fall of Babylon, metaphorically, as the fall of the morning star. But "Satan" itself is never referred to directly as "Lucifer" and every time the word appears in the Bible, it means "morning star".

So Dawnstar is Lucifer

I've known the previous information for a long time. I just didn't put 2+2 together to equal 4. Metaphorically speaking. Didn't come to me until I was doing all the quests in Dawnstar today. I'll spare the spoilers.

gasp... that is some good work

Very true

I thought Lucifer was the Old Testment name for Satan.

Without derailing this topic into religion (not that it would take much): no.

The name Helel is used in the Old Testament (which wasn't in Latin, so the name Lucifer would never be used anyway) to refer to a king of Babylon. The name was also the name used for the Morning Star.

References to the Morning Star even occur in the New Testament (with one being a direct reference to Jesus), but neither are references to the devil.

Interesting. Kal-El is the birth name of Superman, a humanoid who becomes god-like because of our sun (morning star?). Something something, Illuminati.

The bible refers to him as Satan/Devil a liar and the father of the lie. He is also referred to as Beelzebub but I dont think the bible anywhere names him as Lucifer.

To be specific...the name "Lucifer" was used for the morning star/Venus...NOT the name "Helel". Helel was a fallen king of Babylon who was metaphorically called "the morning star".

The Bible was written in Hebrew, translated into Greek, and translated from Greek into Latin by the Catholic Church. Everywhere "morning star" is mentioned "day star", "star of the morning" whatever, in Latin, the word "Lucifer" is used. The word "Lucifer" come down to us, modern English speaking people, from the LATIN Bible of the Catholics

So the word was/is used in the Latin Bible of Catholicism. In English it's translated variously.

I am atheist. I had to study the Bible as part of an archaeology course. The professor (also atheist) called the Bible the most important artifact known to the science of archaeology.

That was 25 years ago, and I'm not an archaeologist, I'm a dip-[censored] who might be remembering wrong, but I don't think I am. It was a neat course, and I paid attention

FWIW the in-game book Ice and Chitin refers to the name as Danstrar. Maybe the name Dawnstar is a modernization/ Cyrodiilization of an old Nord name.

No idea what you're referring to in terms of Lucifer and Venus. Maybe you can explain in spoiler tags.

Helel is Hebrew. It means "Shining One", and it was used to refer to the morning star, in addition to being the name of a Babylonian king in Isaiah.

The actual word "Lucifer" wouldn't appear in any original texts, because none of the original texts are in Latin.

I'm not talking about original texts...i'm talking about the Latin bible of the Catholic Church That's where the word comes to us from "Helel" is ancient Hebrew for "shining one", this was translated as "Lucifer" for Latin.

All i'm saying is that I'm sure one of the writers for the game knew this, and that's why there is a city called "Dawnstar", and that is neat, to me

And yeah, "Danstrar" might be Nordic for "dawnstar", i don't know. But It's not an either/or thing. The same writers probably looked up the Nordic word for "dawnstar". Or already knew it maybe. I don't know.

This is not an argument about religion, btw, or anything else. It's a discussion of language and semantics. I have said nothing about faith, and neither has anyone else.

Just adding this for the moderator who wants to lock the thread because he thinks it's "religious talk".

Well but what is your point? Is there supposed to be something about the in Dawnstar that somehow ties in to Venus and/or Lucifer? I mean, it could just be a name. Writers make up [censored] all the time. Like, Solitude means something in English, too, but there doesn't seem to be a story or thematic reason for the name.

Now that you mention it, Solitude does appear to be one of the least isolated cities in the game...

I was talking about Venus because Venus IS the Morning Star. If I just said "Dawnstar = Lucifer" without explaining...well, looks like I've already had to explain it too much.

The point I was making is that Lucifer = Morning Star = Dawnstar The name "Dawnstar" is synonymous with Lucifer. And I believe the dev knew that, because I knew that, and I've seen it mentioned in popular culture various ways, besides learning about it in college.

[spoiler] I didn't notice it until I finished the Dark Brotherhood questline where the Dark Mother is interred in the sanctuary at Dawnstar, meaning the cult of Sithis (the Brotherhood) lives in Dawnstar.

Oh, and writers don't make up random things. They think about them, and there is a reason for it. Whoever thought of all the names of these towns, had a reason for each name. Whiterun is by the White River, Riften is capital of the Rift hold. Etc.