two questions of word choice

[swan_tower]

I have two questions to put to you, my faithful readers, regarding Midnight Never Come. Both are issues of word choice, but on a broad scale.

[Poll #1010219]

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

The reason I'm having to consider using "elf" is that I need "fae" to refer to the entire faerie race in general, including brownies, pucks, hobgoblins, dracae, and so on. But there's a class of faeries who in analytical terms are referred to as heroic or romantic; in Ireland they'd be the sidhe, but I'm trying very hard to avoid conflating all of British Isles folklore into one mass. The only English term I can find for them is "the trooping faeries," but a) that covers more than just the type I'm thinking of and b) it wouldn't really work as a referent in this context. I've been gimping along without having a word to use for them, but I'm increasingly feeling like I need to change that.

. . . okay, I lied. I do have one other option. There's an Elizabethan variant of the word "elf," which is "ouph." But that sounds like somebody getting the wind knocked out of them.

[mastergode.livejournal.com]

All excellent reasons!

Like I said, so long as you go out of your way to explain their role in the world, it should be fine if you use 'elf'. That is, I don't think you need to beat anyone about the head with forthright descriptions, but if you give their context and then apply the word elf to it, rather than the other way around, I think it will likely work out the way you'd like it to.

I suppose that for people like me, it's just a question of establishing a new paradigm.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

They're definitely getting established as faeries first, sub-types of faerie second. Which would hopefully be enough.