If they were the first elves, and no one was dictating elves should be diurnal, shouldn’t night elves just be “elves”? and High elves be Day elves.
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Their shadowmeld used to only work at night so I assume they did all their fighting/activity at night when they could be safe.
I guess them following the moon god would be nighty, too~
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They worship the moon.
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they used to be called highborne, but after a long, LONG time and a mini-apocalypse, other elves showed up, so… many of them just changed their names to night-elves. that’s the abridged version.
…also, they worship the moon, so… it makes sense to me.
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Night Elves is just their common name.
They call themselves Kaldorei. Children of the Stars.
I imagine they’re referred to as Night Elves because they’re mostly nocturnal and humans, who seem to be the ones who come up with the common names for some reason in almost every genre, already knew of the High Elves so… to them… .Night Elves were nighttime high elves. 
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Their true name, kaldorei, means “children of the stars” so they’ve always had a night motif to them ever since evolving. Elune to them is the moon too which only appears at night.
But it probably also stems from their dark troll origins. The dark trolls mostly lived underground, thus in the dark and away from sunlight. So the night elves may have just kept that trait of preferring the night in their culture.
Though I don’t think they’re strictly nocturnal. They seem to be plenty active day and night.
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Not all NEs were Highborne, just those at the top of the social ladder. Most of them either died in the War of the Ancients or ended up becoming naga, HEs, or NB.
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They didn’t call themselves “night elves” at the beginning. That’s just a colloquial term used to differentiate them from the 10+ varieties of elves we have today.
Their preferred term, “Kaldorei,” doesn’t actually translate to use the word “night.” It’s “children of the stars,” which makes sense given the source of their power and their entire religious pantheon.
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Likely they weren’t always Kal’dorei. Quel’dorei was the name of their nobles back in the day.
Probably to differentiate them from High Elves at the time, even though they were likely unaware of their cousins at the time.
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Yeah. Was going to say, may be something that happened after Elune worship became widespread.
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What confuses me most is that they are “Night” Elves but seem almost entirely dictated by a naturish/woodland theme…shouldn’t they be called Wood Elves? Like the Tolkienesque Wood Elves that live in the woods?
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Day elf
Awahooo
Fighter of the night elf
Awahooo
Champion of the sun
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many eons ago, dark trolls settled near the Well of Eternity. These trolls were nocturnal in nature. Over time, the magic of the Well transformed them into what we know as night elves. Their skin changed to a violet color and it is to believed that the original night elves still slept during the day. It was the study of the arcane power within the well that brought about the highborne society.
That is a caste of Night Elves, they were the upper class that primarily used arcane magic.
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They are Kal’dorei (Darnassian word meaning “children of the stars”). Night Elves was a name given by others to them afterwards.
Even an undead horde warlock knows this.
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That was only after the culture shift away from Arcane magic.
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Just throwing this out here if the night elves got their name by drawing upon the moonwell. Wouldn’t the blood elves be called DAY elves for drawing upon the sun well?
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Wood elves was already claimed by several other system’s lores so they tried to be different. Way I see it anyway.
So wood elves, high elves…hey blizzard how about we jsut do that last copy pasta and get dark elves too. lets us be warhammer proper lol.
So they are not wood elves…they are night elves. Who just really really really like the woods.
With elune’s night warrior aspect I dare say more truth to this jest than it appears. Even good elves, not dark elves, in times of great need will summon an aspect of Khaine. Dark elves just do this all the time.
Khaine…not a nice deity aspect. He is there to kill. With extreme prejudice. Kind of like the night warrior. YOu don’t invoke that to hold a tea party with your foes.
Good elves (non dark elves) only summon him as an aspect of war. Dark elves worship him as the god of murder and well lets just say they like killing. A lot.
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Personally I think the Nightborne, or Void elves are about as close as wow can get to the drow elves.
I think it’s just to keep them original named. Several other names for us could have been taken. Also Dark Trolls → Night Elves seems like a natural name for the devolution that has occurred.