So, we know that darnassian is, for the lack of a better term; “true elven” - meaning it was the first language of the elves as a whole, created and used in the days of the old kaldorei empire. But oddly, it’s named after a city/nation that was only recently founded. so what was it called before darnassus?
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Hmm, maybe the city was named after the language? Or more likely it’s just a lore hole that they never really thought about.
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What a classy plot hole.
What if Darnassus was named after Darnassian?
Maybe it was called just Kaldorei or something lol.
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tbh you’re probably right. If you look at their theme for naming things, they seem to like “kal” a lot; Kalimdor, Kaldorei. if it wasnt just “Kaldorei”, theres a good chance there was a “kal” in it lol
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Zin-Azshari before the sundering. After the Sundering Darnassus once The Night Elves made Tyrande and Malfurion their leader. Just a guess @ this point. who knows.
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Well Darnassian is most commonly spoken by Lowborn elves, The other elves are so high and mighty they started speaking in different dialects. (not unlike the real world, actually)
They probably just refereed to their language as the common tongue, or the lower dialect.
It may be true that they didn’t decide on a proper name for their language until they built their home. Or as Caelus puts it.
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I’ve never found a good answer for this one.
I always assumed Darnassian referred to the night elves that (we know and love) who make up the bulk of their race post Sundering.
Darnassus I always figured was named after the people, the Kaldorei who were Darnassians. As opposed to the Kaldorei who were highborne in Dire Maul for instance.
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Maybe it was just called Teldrassil before, that’s the name of the tree the city was on.
Teldrassilian…
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There’s an old vanilla quest that confirms the Darnassian name wasn’t used before.
That object you found in Silithus — it was in fact a book. It was a journal written in a very ancient dialect of what we now call the Darnassian tongue.
The other two elf languages seem to be either named after their land, Thalassian - Quel’thalas, or their people, Shalassian - Shal’dorei (nightborne). Naga language is Nazja for Nazjatar.
Since the night elf empire was so expansive I’d probably guess it was off Kal’dorei instead. Maybe Kalassian? We don’t really actually know though. The Third War and the fall of Nordrassil marked a new age after for night elves so they built a new city and it seems renamed their stuff to it.
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