In Autumn quarter this year I took a Scandinavian studies course, and one of the topics we went over was names. In ancient Scandinavia, names carried a lot of meaning and spoke a lot about the individual in question. Most young soldiers who left to go a-viking (raiding) would leave with nought but a simple name, this being your classic Olaf's and such. Through their deeds and adventures, they could earn an additional distinguishing characteristic, either referring to some physical feature of their body or wear or a deed they committed in or out of battle. Svein Forkbeard, for example, is a man called Svein who has a Forked Beard (the Vikings were pragmatic folks).
This name would give you, of course, a name. But even this name had different meanings and could have prefixes or suffixes added to it to further differentiate it. But through this addition of another adjective, we could give the persons name themselves a story and make it stick out more. This is something I would like to attempt in Skyrim; a character with a simple, memorable name that means something. Additionally, using Norse-influenced names makes perfect sense considering the environment and world of Skyrim. I'll start with the simple name with a prefix format and add a suffix or something else later based on my deeds or anything that stands out to me during this experience.
I'll most likely end up playing a Khjajiit character, since so often I find myself playing a Human Male Soldier walking stereotype type character in RPG's. So I'll switch it out and play some sort of anthropomorphic kleptomaniac cat with an anger issue. Khajiit names follow a similar format, with then main name featuring a prefix that has meaning and the familial name after that (usually following an apostrophe). With all of this said, my characters name for this class shall be Dar'Orvar, literally meaning "Arrow Thief". Switching it up even more, I hope to be a mostly archery-focused character that freely steals things (I almost always use swords and never perform amoral actions in a game).
I didn't really think about the difference between being given a name versus earning a name, so I'm glad you wrote about that. I found that it was always rather annoying to me that the stormcloacks were named after Ulfric, but now I'm wondering if Ulfric is named after the stormcloacks. I hope you enjoy playing a different type of character, I know I usually play a stealth character, but sometimes get really tired so I just muscle my way through some areas, and I just can't seem to get a handle on a magic based character.
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