Capitalizing fantasy races?

[Shoshopu]

I was going to post this in RP discussion, but I felt like it was too general since it also happens in practically any game with non-human "races" (or rather, races called anything but "human", I guess, more on the air quotes later) and sort of applies to writing fantasy in general

 

How do people feel about capitalizing the word for a race mid-sentence? 

 

For instance, most FFXIV wikis capitalize the names of the races mid-sentence (I don't remember if that's how it's written ingame or not). But my boyfriend sitting behind just pointed out that he doesn't normally see "elves" or "dwarves" capitalized in stories with vanilla elves and dwarves. For another example, the GW2 wiki doesn't capitalize the names of races mid-sentence ("The charr are..."). However, within GW2's community I see lots of people capitalize it all the time, regardless of how it's written ingame.

 

In fantasy worlds that offer a variety of sentient races to play as (elves, humans, trolls, whatever), they typically seem to be genetically distinct species, as opposed to races as we use the term outside of that context. And we don't capitalize the word "human" even though we are "the human race". As far as I can find (here's an example), you do capitalize the proper names for nationalities, races, tribes, etc. So it would make sense to capitalize "Dunesfolk", "Wildwood", because they're tribes/clans... But we don't say "Hispanic Humans", if we followed up with the word "human" at all (and why would we, when we have no nonhuman contemporaries) I could see maybe in a universe where its different races all diverged from a single ancestor race (the elezen and hyur are like this, right?), then it would be similar to the way we use the word "race" in the real world. One example I can think of where it could work that way is the Elder Scrolls universe. Bretons, Nords, Imperials, etc. are all offshoots of "man", Bosmer, Altmer, Dunmer etc. are all related races of "mer"... Other fantasy universes' races are completely unrelated, though.

 

There just doesn't seem to be a real convention to it, except maybe what the devs' or writers' preference seems to be. Personally I tend to fall into the lowercase camp since most fantasy races would more accurately be described as species, especially in cases where members of a single species/race are divided into multiple and distinct cultures and tribes. Does it just depend from universe to universe whether or not it's proper to capitalize it?

 

So what's everyone's thoughts on it? Your preference and why? I feel like there's already some literary resources on this that I just didn't manage to find the google terms for or something or there's a really simple answer. Also I tried to make it not so much a rambling wall of text but I failed sorry

[Sounsyy]

SE's lore capitalizes race and clan names because they are proper nouns. In the English language, proper nouns are capitalized.

 

Things like "Roegadyn" should always be capitalized, similar to how one should always capitalize "Korean." "Seeker of the Sun" tribes should all also be capitalized, similar to how "Navajo" is.

 

So, while I admit to sometimes getting lazy and just typing "roegadyn" in a sentence, it's grammatically incorrect to do so.

[Shoshopu]

So it just depends on whether or not they're defined as proper nouns, then? That makes sense. Not all games/series define the names of their races as proper nouns, I guess is the thing?

 

The different races/ethnicities/etc of humans are proper nouns (or at least their proper terms are, but not general terms like black or white), but the word human itself is not, was the argument (edit: well that's not the word for it, I'm not trying to argue it's correct not to capitalize FFXIV's races) observation I was making. But it all does come down to the individual source lore, I guess.

[Faye]

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.

 

But personally, I often find myself capitalizing them simply out of habit (oftentimes, they're capitalized in game and/or on the game's accompanying material, so I guess I just picked it up). Since they're words that are foreign to us, the first instinct is probably to capitalize them.

[FreelanceWizard]

Hmm, their being proper nouns is an interesting point. I have to admit, in my own RP, I typically apply normal noun casing to the race names, but not to the clans; I suppose to me, the clans of each race are like ethnicities.

 

However, it's entirely likely I'm wrong here.

[Sounsyy]

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:

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.

[Faye]

 

EDIT for clarification:

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.

 

I'm not sure that's an accurate comparison, though. Is Titan calling all the races "Children of Man" any different than an alien landing and calling us all "earthlings?" The Primals are from another plane of existence, beings with immense power that are an entirely different form of life. It could simply be he's using the phrase the same way a God-like being may refer to "mortals"--a manifestation of life far different from his own, easily lumped into the same category by someone looking down on them, but not necessarily in fact the same species.

[Sounsyy]

I'm not sure that's an accurate comparison, though. Is Titan calling all the races "Children of Man" any different than an alien landing and calling us all "earthlings?" The Primals are from another plane of existence, beings with immense power that are an entirely different form of life. It could simply be he's using the phrase the same way a God-like being may refer to "mortals"--a manifestation of life far different from his own, easily lumped into the same category by someone looking down on them, but not necessarily in fact the same species.

 

Okay, Titan aside, Lewphon of Sharlayan writes the Five Ages - An Eorzean Chronology in the Year 233 of the Sixth Astral Era. This is roughly 250 years before the first Hyur begin their migration to Eorzea. In it, he describes the beginning when "man" first comes to Eorzea and the Twelve see fit to grant mankind their blessings.

 

The first three races of man to set foot in Eorzea were Elezen, Roegadyn, and Lalafell. So if these three were separate species, the text would read "Age of Elezen" or "Age of Roegadyn" instead of "Age of Man." Even in ARR Lore Text we are referred to as the five races of man. By English grammatical rules, all race names are capitalized. Elezen, Roegadyn, Lalafell, Miqo'te, and Hyur are all races that fall under the umbrella species "man."

 

I'm not really sure how this turned into a debate. It's just simple English grammatical rules. In English, race names are capitalized. If you choose not to capitalize the race name, no big deal, it's just grammatically incorrect is all I'm saying.

[Warren Castille]

Grammatically incorrect in terms of how things are done in America, on Earth, sure. Who's to say whether or not they're using the same indication? If the five races are really just racial and not a species-thing, it'd make a lot more sense to see half-breeds and the like. To my knowledge, there aren't any canonical halflings in Eorzea, so they might be using "race" and "species" interchangeably. I know I was quite irked when XI finally introduced a character who was half-elvaan half-human, just because it upset the status quo so much.

 

I personally (obviously, given my stance in the first paragraph) prefer to consider the races common nouns. I just don't see a reason it should matter, especially since there aren't any real native lands among them. We're all settlers here. It's not like all Elezen are from Elezia and all Highlanders are from Highland. I think only the location should be capitalized. Gridanian miqo'te, Ul'dah lalafell, Limsan roegadyn. That's your heritage, not your biology.

 

/rambling, stops writing