Human is a common noun, not a proper noun. Which is the key difference.
Common nouns are the general names of people, places, or things. Like human, city, day.
Proper nouns are the names of specific people, places, or things. Like Dutch, Seattle, Wednesday.
In the case of human vs dwarf vs elf not being capitalized, it's likely due to the fact that other games may choose to categorize being a dwarf as separate from being humankind. So you have mankind, dwarfkin, elfkin.
The difference in FFXIV is that Miqo'te, Roegadyn, Hyur, etc are all specific subsets of mankind. In FFXIV, we're all still "human." So race names like Miqo'te are treated like race/nationality is in real life.
EDIT for clarification:
Correct, elves and dwarves and other fantasy peoples from Tolkien's tales are separate species from humans, hence why they are not capitalized. We know this because the elves leave Middle Earth to mankind. The term "mankind" not including them.
However, in FFXIV, the umbrella of mankind does encompass Elezen, Miqo'te, Lalafell, Roegadyn - not just Hyur. See: "Age of Man" or when Titan calls us all indiscriminately "Children of Man." (Note: These two phrases in quotations are proper and capitalized because they are the proper name of an Era, like the Renaissance, and a proper title respectively.)
This tells us in XIV lore, Miqo'te are actually not a separate species. We are all one species, mankind, with a bunch of radical racial divisions. So grammatically, yes, race names should always be capitalized.
Common nouns are the general names of people, places, or things. Like human, city, day.
Proper nouns are the names of specific people, places, or things. Like Dutch, Seattle, Wednesday.
In the case of human vs dwarf vs elf not being capitalized, it's likely due to the fact that other games may choose to categorize being a dwarf as separate from being humankind. So you have mankind, dwarfkin, elfkin.
The difference in FFXIV is that Miqo'te, Roegadyn, Hyur, etc are all specific subsets of mankind. In FFXIV, we're all still "human." So race names like Miqo'te are treated like race/nationality is in real life.
EDIT for clarification:
(09-17-2014, 10:59 PM)Faye Wrote: Grammatically, there's no reason they should be capitalized. Human is never capitalized. You rarely see elf or dwarf or halfling or anything of that sort capitalized, because why would it be? It's a species, not a race. We don't capitalize "dog" or "cat" or any animal species. As far as grammatical correctness goes, there's no reason at all to capitalize it.
Correct, elves and dwarves and other fantasy peoples from Tolkien's tales are separate species from humans, hence why they are not capitalized. We know this because the elves leave Middle Earth to mankind. The term "mankind" not including them.
However, in FFXIV, the umbrella of mankind does encompass Elezen, Miqo'te, Lalafell, Roegadyn - not just Hyur. See: "Age of Man" or when Titan calls us all indiscriminately "Children of Man." (Note: These two phrases in quotations are proper and capitalized because they are the proper name of an Era, like the Renaissance, and a proper title respectively.)
This tells us in XIV lore, Miqo'te are actually not a separate species. We are all one species, mankind, with a bunch of radical racial divisions. So grammatically, yes, race names should always be capitalized.
