Bretagne. And I ain't even from France. It's got the ancient celtic origins. (Ancient Breton, hence the region's still called Bretagne, they had a common ethnicity and etymology as their cousins on the british isles.) Their region has become more and more Frenchyfied during the ages, but still shows significant Breton influences throughout.

If Bethesda based their Bretons on any real-world people, then Bretagne is by far the best match.

Because it doesn't matter.

what I can tell is that the Breton names (after Daggerfall) are based off of Latin. Not in the ways the Imperial names are. Those names are actual Latin. But the way that languages develop. For example, Valtieri is a Latin based name, as is Motiere, and Amelion. But they are not Latin. Valtieri is very much Italian, Motiere and Amelion are quite French. Other names sound to be from that southern European environment. Some may even be argued as Spanish style. Sintav, potentially.

Bretagne (also known as Brittany) and the native Bretons are certainly the source of the racial name. However, the individual names I don't believe can be limited to a single region of Europe.

Funny, although I didn't really think about it that much, I did notice the calendar system (and English for that matter) is based around Earth. For a game that has day/night cycles, it just makes things easier for a gamer to pick up. If I had to learn a whole new calendar system, would make it a lot more complicated.

But saying that, I don't really play the game based on the calendar and from what I've seen, the calendar doesn't affect game play except for respawning of items (ie. ore, repopulating dungeons). I don't really even think about how many days in the month there are in the game. It's not like I have to be at a certain spot on a certain month.

And along the lines of English - if everyone spoke another language, would just make it overly complex. Yes, I do like movies where say the Germans speak German and not American English. I do like how certain characters speak certain languages in the game.

I'm actually writing a novel right now that is on a different planet and I came up with these same questions - why on earth would another planet speak English? Different novels and different movies tackle the question differently. Have you seen The Hunt for Red October - that did it quite cool.

At the end of the day - it's so we can still immerse ourselves in the game without learning an entire new world. Learning about the country side, people, locations, items, lore and so on is hard enough. Learning a new calendar system and language would be taking things too far for the majority of game players.

If it were a book - I'd prefer it. Game - nah, I'll just accept it for how it is.

why does tamiel speak english? why do nords have scandinavian accents? why has everyone made little to no technological progress for centuries?

the different names for months and days are confusing enough. we have kept to this ancient, poorly organized gregorian calender for little reason other than it would be a greater pain in the ass to adjust to a new one. no way are general audiences going to learn a new calender for a game when we wont even do it for practical purposes. when it comes to fantasy, you have to have enough real world connections if you want any chance of immersing yourself into the more abnormal aspects, even if they dont make any sense. realistically they should have entirely different units of time, languages, cultural norms, and everything else, but that would just be too weird and too annoying to get used to.

Not really.

Ancient Celtic (specifically: Gaulish, because it's closest) nomenclature is often easily confused with Italic/Latin nomenclature though. Latinization of names often got quite similar results. Often just replacing noun cases would result in a name that would seem like Latin, especially for us. For instance: Mediolanon -> Mediolanum. Latinizing "Amelion" would probably result in Amelius.

As far as your Spanish connection is concerned, most modern Roman languages have Celto-Roman influences related to Celtic origins, with Spanish it's Celtiberian and Hispano-Celtic for example.


True, as always Bethesda have used their creative prerogative. Especially when naming characters. I don't think Bethesda actually researched names etymologically before sticking them on NPC's and places. Bethesda just used what seemed cool and what seemed to fit. And imho they did the right thing. Frankly I don't care about etymologically correct names, indicating some exact real world group of people whom some Elder Scrolls race has been based on. Just use some usefull influences and make the rest up as you go, it's fantasy after all.

The Bretons of Bretagne still fit best though, roughly, as a source of inspiration culturally.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Nirn

diagram is here. No idea how they based the approximations. Only that this is their result.

An orc raised on Breton cuisine

My Amelion point didn't mean it as an actual Latinized word, but as a French word. French is based on a mix of different languages, but I believe it is at least accepted as a direct decendant from Latin. That had been what I meant when I said Latin based.

The Spanish point i concede. My focus of study in history is certainly not languages.

It's an alien planet so it's even more remarkable they have humans, bears, wolves, apples and cabbages. It's a game - go with it.

Yes, all romance languages are direct descendants from Latin.

Skyrim apples are totally alien. Hundreds and hundreds of barrels are full of them but there is not one apple tree anywhere.

we weaponized apples and sent them to Nirn using giant cannons. Admittedly, it wasn't our best idea...

Interesting. One thing to remember, though, is that if that's a wiki, I assume it's open to all to edit, and not just Bethesda themselves?

True, but my impression was always that French had more non-Latin influence than modern Italian and Spanish. I don't quite know if this is correct, but I believe I've heard that modern Spaniards who speak no Italian and Italians who speak no Spanish can still manage to converse, albeit in a very rough fashion. French always struck me as having a more varied ancestry, although it is certainly a Romance language. I presume repeated invasions and migrations had the same effect as the Norman invasion of England, which caused English to diverge significantly from German, to the point where English-speakers and German-speakers definitely can't converse, except perhaps for the occasional cognate word. "Wo ist die toilette" is a German sentence many English-speakers might comprehend, at least if the German were speaking slowly and clearly, but most everything else just comes out to non-German-speaking English-speakers as gibberish.

correct. When we use this wiki, we must always take it with a grain of salt and a leap of faith. A grain of salt because it can be edited by anyone really, and a leap of faith in the hopes that Beth will at least correct mistakes on the wiki.

I SPENT THE TWENTIETH OF BUTT FIRE WAITING FOR THE BLACKSMITH BUT IT TURNS OUT HE WAS ONLY AVAILABLE ON THE SEVENTIETH OF FACEFONDLE!

Someone bombed one too many Dodongos.

Not exactly: all Romance languages are direct descendants from Vulgar Latin.

Which off course was based on classical Latin, but differed strongly from classical Latin phonologically, grammatically and in vocabulary. If you can even consider Vulgar Latin as "one" language then Vulgar Latin was a spoken language, which varied considerably, strongly influenced by local (mostly Celtic in the Romance areas) etymology.

True, but I don't think the people over at the wiki go "herp derp" when someone puts false info in an article on purpose.

By vulgar Latin, are you referring to the language of the common folk of the Italian peninsula, for whom vulgar Latin would have been their first language, or are you referring to its use across the Empire, as a trade language much like international Greek was before it, which would have been the second language of lots of people?

True, but it's entirely possible for incorrect informtion to remain in a wiki. Lord knows it happens with Wikipedia.

interesting note though: Wikipedia's biography of Abraham Lincoln is apparently one of the best in the world.

Which is what I said. Proto Romance and Vulgar should not be confused.