Apostrophes in Quel'dorei and Sin'dorei

Lore Story Forum
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There is no apostrophe in Kaldorei.

Writing it as “Kal’dorei” is what got you docked points by your Darnassian language professors and why they generally looking down upon you.

So then why are there apostrophes in Quel’dorei and Sin’dorei? One might think these were completely arbitrary and nonsensical uses of apostrophes in made up languages without any actually thought out grammatical structures.

But the answer might be found in English itself. Apostrophes are used for contraction. That is to say, an apostrophe can be used to contract the word for High - Quel - and Kaldorei to make Quel’dorei. Which is what the Highborne quite literally were, High Night Elves.

One might protest that there’s no way that Sin’dorei means Blood Night Elves, if one were to consider Sin’dorei a contraction of the word for Blood - Sin - and Kaldorei, and likewise that there is no way that Ren’dorei means Void Night Elves. But luckily Sin’dorei and Ren’dorei are not actually Darnassian words. They are Thalassian words. And, well, the Highborne were known for their arcane studies, not their linguistic ones.

We can see this was the case for the Nightborne as well, as they also put an apostrophe in Shal’dorei, but had failed their Darnassian vocabulary quizzes and mistook the word for Shadow - Shal - to be the word for Night, and were too embarrassed to admit this, so they said they were actually talking in an entirely different language, Shalassian, instead rather than admit their mistakes.

TL;DR:

Stop putting an apostrophe in Kaldorei.

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Hu’man Paladin

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Is what you get when you chew on too much felweed.

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I think, Amadis, the answer IS found in English - just not quite the one you’re looking for.

I believe the purpose of the apostrophes is a pronunciation guide, or rather, to tell readers where to place the stresses in a word that is entirely made up.

Would you pronounce sindorei differently from sin’dorei?
Quel’dorei from queldorei?
Kal’dorei from kaldorei?

Or do I just need more coffee?

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I’m completely guilty of this.

To be fair, every time you cram an elf full of a different type of magic, you get a new elf. They’re like those pokemon with the elemental stone upgrade bits.

I should just call them all dorei. Then they’d cringe and roll their eyes and say “It’s not a PHASE, MOM.” in their most sarcastic, hipstery tone.

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Or you know both words, shal and kal, can mean night. Languages can have two words that mean the exact same thing. For example, a guy or man literally mean the same thing, one is less formal however. Maybe Shal is just a more formal word for it.

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Elves are the Eevees of Warcraft :rofl:

Interestingly enough, I’ve actually seen “kal’dorei” used in-game, but by Liadrin. https://wow.gamepedia.com/Take_Me_To_Your_Leader#Notes

So, I’m inclined to agree with Jellex here. They’re there to indicate stress. In several languages, English being the exception, stress is indicated by the use of diacritics, or accents. Basically, little apostrophes over the stressed letter. But, if you’re programming for an English game, and you want to indicate a change in stress, are you going to go look up the Alt-Code for “sindórei”, or are you going to go “sin’dorei”? It might have been a matter of convenience. Plus, users would probably like typing “sin’dorei” more than “sindórei”, and the apostrophe gives it a cool fantasy vibe.

Canonically, it feels right to me that, as the Elven tongue dispersed into different dialects, the simplest change might be the stress, rather than the actual pronunciation.

As for me, I pronounce “kaldorei” with the stress on the “kal”, so “KALdorEI”. When I pronounce “sin’dorei”, the tress is on the “DOR”, “sin’DORei”, but perhaps I’m wrong.

Another thing to note, is the “dorei” doesn’t mean “elf”, it means “child”. Or… If we extrapolate from it’s usage with “Quel’dorei” or “Highborne”, it means “born of” or, in noun form, “borne.”

So…

Shal’dorei is “Children of the Night” or “Nightborne”
Quel’dorei is “Children of Noble Birth” or “Highborne”
Sin’dorei is “Children of Blood” or “Bloodborne”
Kaldorei is “Children of the Stars” or… “Starborne”

The last of which is, by far, the coolest missed opportunity in WoW naming conventions.

EDIT: I forgot Ren’dorei :grin:

Ren’dorei is “Children of the Void” or “Voidborne”. Which is also cool.

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Sin’dorei is usual rendered as “Blood Elves”. Which conjures to me imaages of Elves harvesting on using blood. I would have made it, Children of the Blood, which, to me ears, sounds much closer to the original intent to indicate children of some tragedy.

Bloodborne is similar, though children of the blood sounds more poetic.

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My understanding is that “X Elves” is not what the elves call themselves. I mean, they do, but that’s a recent thing. Really, that’s a name given to them by the non-elven races.

Elves call themselves “x’dorei”.

For example, a sin’dorei might call themselves a “blood elf” when speaking to a non-elven character, like an orc or a human, because that’s more familiar to them. However, among other sin’dorei, they’d like call themselves just that, sin’dorei. Which, in their tongue, is “children of blood”. Their brains haven’t contextualized themselves as “blood elves”, their brains have contextualized themselves as “children of blood”.

Also, I agree that, aesthetically, “children of x” sounds way more poetic for all of the cases, my personal exception being the starborne.

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In fact, I can just imagine a scene where one of my elves (my warlock, in particular) is explaining that.

“No, no, darling. I’m a sin’dorei. I let you call me blood elf, because apparently sin’dorei is too difficult for your orcish mud brain to remember, or too elegant to slip past those ghastly tusks. Do you ever clean them?”

Or, more recently.

“No, no, darling. I’m a ren’dorei. I let you call me void elf, because I know that you humans don’t live long enough to have time to memorize a word as elegant as ren’dorei. Seriously, what are you, like? Thirty? Don’t you basically have one foot in the grave already?”

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Yeah. But when we play the game we hear “Blood Elves” or “Night Elves” (there too “Children of the Stars” is much better than “Night Elves”).

Even now, I would prefer that they use sin’dorei or kaldorei.

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I would too, but frankly, they design the game for mass appeal. I guess the engagement metrics say that “night elf” and “blood elf” is more appealing to a broad audience then “kaldorei” and “sin’dorei”.

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So essentially?

  • Kaldorei: Children of Stars.
  • Quel’dorei: Children of Noble Birth.
  • Sin’dorei: Children of Blood.
  • Ren’dorei: Children of Void.
  • Shal’dorei: Children of Shadow.
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Shal’dorei is “Children of Night”.

Which only helps illustrate the point that “elves don’t call themselves elves.” Because, the elves that are “Night Elves” call themselves “Children of Stars” .

Then, Nightborne - who are arguably far more secluded and haughty than the Night Elves - straight up tell everyone, “No. We won’t let you call us some other kind of elf, you will call us by what we call ourselves.”

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Ahh, I suppose that makes some sense for the Nightborne since they spent what? 10k years in a dome without a sky to look up to. Though, they did seem to have some fascination with the Stars over the Moon; based off certain parts of the raid. Weird that. Regardless, “Dorei” means children of, pretty straightforward. :smiley:

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Amadis, you know you rank very high on my list of “acceptable, even agreeable night elves”. You are a man of high caliber with a strong knowledge of lore.

But in this, you are wrong. You are so very, clearly, objectively wrong. The level of wrongness reaches from the northern shores of Northrend, down to the southernmost tip of Pandaria. It is only comparable with the utmost of misjudgments, such as Anduin thinking peace with Sylvanas was possible, or Anduin thinking peace with the Horde will work the fifteenth time, or Anduin thinking he could tell Tyrande no.

Yes. You are Anduin levels of wrong.

Your whole premise is faulty. Rather than accept the blame as properly laid at the feet of the hillbilly elves, you blame the properly educated ones. The highborne chose the names Quel’dorei, Shal’dorei, Shen’dralar, Sin’dorei, Ren’dorei and so forth. Probably a few other 'doreis I’m missing, or Blizzard hasn’t invented yet.

Only those elves who forsook the use of arcane magic, who willingly chose to be less than themselves, whose men were so lazy they napped for millennia… Only the hillbilly elves forgot to properly punctuate their own race’s name.

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Just because you ignorant peasants don’t use it doesn’t mean your way is right. You descend from the unwashed uneducated masses, your language being simplified over the Highborne variants makes sense.

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Fal’dorei.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Fal%27dorei
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