Capitalization of Fantasy Races

MCWilliams

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Looking at these recent comments, I think I may have figured out why I'm so uncertain as to capitalize or not to capitalize race names. It has to do with common vs. proper nouns, as well as the historical usage of certain "critters". Let me explain. I do not use traditional fantasy race names like elves, dwarves, etc., but I do have some creatures called ogres, goblins, giants, etc. Of course, I have humans as well. It seems to me that humans, ogres, goblins, giants, etc., are indeed common nouns; however for those races who have distinct names, belonging do district cultures with their own history, lore, and language, would these not be proper nouns? I think they would.

My problem originally arose when I had "human" listed with, or in the same sentence with, another one of these proper noun race names. It just looked, well, funky (for lack of a better word). Thus, I have been struggling with finding some rule to either make them all consistently lower case or all consistently capitalized -- but that may not be possible. I may have to live with a mix of common noun (lower case) race names along side other proper noun (capitalized) race names.
 

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I guess the question would be -- do all your humans have just one culture, language, country, community? All your ogres? All your goblins?
 

MCWilliams

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No to those -- humans, ogres, goblins do not have one culture. And that is why I suppose they would be treated as common nouns. But other races (let's say Scaithi) do have a common culture and language. That makes such a name a proper noun, if I understand correctly.
 

Shweta

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No to those -- humans, ogres, goblins do not have one culture. And that is why I suppose they would be treated as common nouns. But other races (let's say Scaithi) do have a common culture and language. That makes such a name a proper noun, if I understand correctly.

Hard to say. You can have a proper noun without a common culture and language (for example: Asian).

Can you have a common culture and language and be just a common noun? Maybe? It's hard to think of accepted ones that aren't nationalities. (What's a language? A dialect with an army.) But I guess subcultures might count here, and we don't capitalize "geek" or "surfer" or "goth"...

So it's more complicated than that. Which is why I fall back on the analogy rather than trying to re-create the rule.
 

MCWilliams

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Ah but there are many examples of a people who have a common culture and language, but no organized nation. We capitalize Celtic, but there is no "Celtic" nation (even in ancient times, there were may Celtic kingdoms or tribes). The same is true of Vikings,who were not just Norse but widely disbursed from Eastern Europe to Greenland (but still of a common cultural heritage). As for your example of "goths", well, you're correct in the modern since, but ancient Goths (referring to the various cultures of Visigoths and Ostrogoths) is capitalized -- and, again, while there was no single country of "Gothica", the various Gothic tribes and kingdoms all shared a common culture and heritage.
 

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I am probably being too picky, but in the novel that I am writing, in which I have this exact same issue, I simply cannot let myself use the term 'human' when referring to Man. I guess it is because I see the term 'human' as being specific to what we call ourselves here on earth, while the fantasy setting is generally not earth. I use terms like Man, Mankind, Men, etc. but not human. I think I arrived at this conclusion while trying to think from the point of view of an elf or dwarf.

There is an essay involving Tolkien (who was quite inconsistent in his capitalization between different books - see Hobbit vs LOTR) that said that the names should be capitalized if referring to the race as a whole, but lowercase if referring to individuals. I have found problems with this also, especially when a single sentence contains BOTH, i.e. I look pretty dumb having 'Dwarf' and 'dwarf' in the same sentence.
 

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Ah but there are many examples of a people who have a common culture and language, but no organized nation. We capitalize Celtic, but there is no "Celtic" nation (even in ancient times, there were may Celtic kingdoms or tribes).

Sure, and cf Asian. A single nation or tribe is simply the smallest group that gets capitalization, afaict.

The whole "nation" concept as we have it today is itself much more recent than th capitalization.

I am probably being too picky, but in the novel that I am writing, in which I have this exact same issue, I simply cannot let myself use the term 'human' when referring to Man.

You win on historical accuracy but it comes with historical chauvinistic baggage. If you're okay with that, then sure. :Shrug:
 

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You win on historical accuracy but it comes with historical chauvinistic baggage. If you're okay with that, then sure.


I've read about lots of people being upset on this issue, especially concerning Tolkien, and I guess I just don't quite get it. Words often have more than one meaning, and in this case the usage of Man (mankind) is as a race versus the usage meaning an individual, such as man or woman. Humans themselves within the world would almost never use the term; it is something used by other races to refer to mankind. I expect that people dislike this usage because they can read 'mankind' as demonstrating a patriarchal society. Well, medieval societies were patriarchal. I don't see the baggage except from those who want to rewrite history. I am very happy that modern society is evolving towards a more ideal equality.

I could make my world different if I chose, having it be equality-based within a feudal system, but that feels contrived, because in a feudal society life (for humans) is so short and brutal that naturally the women devote a tremendous percentage of their lives to child bearing and rearing. I do touch on the issue in my novel, though, as the elves have a fully equal society and the strongest major character in my book is a female elf. Also, the leader of the elves is a queen.
 

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I've read about lots of people being upset on this issue, especially concerning Tolkien, and I guess I just don't quite get it. Words often have more than one meaning, and in this case the usage of Man (mankind) is as a race versus the usage meaning an individual, such as man or woman.


Yep. And those multiple meanings reflect cultural understanding. The use of "Man" to mean the race removes women from visibility as an important part of the mix. The use of "American" to mean "Anglo US citizen" removes black US citizens, Francophile Canadians, the native people of the land, and many others from visibility.

Language does not simply describe. It also focuses and defocuses attention. This is why the people who are often defocused get upset.

Now, I'm not actually saying this as someone who's busy getting her knickers in a twist over it. I'm saying it as a linguist, a cognitive semanticist, who studies these things and can point you at related psycholinguistic data if you're interested.

Note, I'm not saying you can't do it. Just that if you do it, I at least will find totally liberated female characters really implausible, and other readers might feel like something's a bit off, and not totally trust you, without knowing why. Given that you're not doing that, you ought to be okay :)

I'd like to see what the elves have to say about the humans calling themselves Men. I could see 'em finding it funny, even. I mean, if I ran into a race that called themselves MaleDwarves, I would be making "Do they know where they came from? Maybe they crawled out of rocks?" jokes.

 
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knight_tour

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I'd like to see what the elves have to say about the humans calling themselves Men. I could see 'em finding it funny, even. I mean, if I ran into a race that called themselves MaleDwarves, I would be making "Do they know where they came from? Maybe they crawled out of rocks?" jokes.

The elves and dwarves call them 'Man' or 'Mankind' (when speaking the common tongue), and when they do so it has nothing to do with male or female; they are referring to the race. The word 'human' does not exist in this world; 'Man' is the only real term for the race, at least in the language of Man, i.e. elves and dwarves have their own terms for Man in their languages, and those terms are most likely not so politically incorrect.

I don't think elves would see it as funny, because elves live such long lives that they are well aware of the differences between themselves and Man and why those differences exist. Elves have the ability to live fully-realized lives at a very slow pace, while Men are frantically crashing through their incredibly short lives. Procreation is such a negligible part of elven life, at least percentage-wise, that it makes sense that there would be no real distinction between males and females, while the shorter human lives force offspring to be a big deal, encompassing a large percentage of a woman's life. I think that anyone who would bash an author over modern-day political correctness is asking for a terrible novel, at least when the subject matter covers something like feudalism.
 
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Tyler Silvaris

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Finally able to reply

Greetings and Salutations,
I know this thread isn't exactly recent, but it is the thread that brought me to the site, so I must comment.
Reading through this was incredibly helpful. After proofreading my current project, a Fantasy novel wrapped up in intrigue and dealing with a lot of the world's fantasy races, I ran into the problem of whether or not to capitalize race names. I took this for granted with the common Elf and Dwarf, but for some reason my spell checker insisted on always capitalizing Halfling, which for some reason bugged me. Then, when going into more obscure races and your more monster-like races, I started to wonder if I should be always capitalizing ever race name.
I argued with myself incessantly. As others have pointed out, each side of the argument seemed equally valid but incomplete.
I have decided to take inspiration from this post and it's references to Tolkein and his use of capitalization. The problem from there was going through 400+ pages and deciding which use of each race name (Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Asterion, Grunur, Goblin, Hijin, Nekros...you get the idea) I needed to capitalize or not.
Thank you all for the contributions you made to this thread and for bringing me into this community face first.
 

Roxxsmom

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I think the capitalization thing depends on whether the race name is really designating a culture, nationality, or identity, versus simply denoting a species.

We don't capitalize human, for instance, so if dwarf, or elf, or pittypat, or whatever is being used simply in descriptive terms, then don't capitalize.

He was an elf.

He was a human.

He was English.

He was a Catholic.

He was Altarian.

The elf was an Altarian Catholic, and a member of the Order of the Sacred Rose.

Fred was an Altarian, and a member of the Elves of the Garter.
 
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Jacob_Wallace

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I don't capitalize unless it's a nationality. As you said, if Elf and Dwarf are capitalized, then so would Human, and Dog and Cat for that matter.

I would capitalize Martian however, since that is a nationality like American. I try not to use names like that though.