Fridge Brilliance:
- The different Elf tribes all have their own unique naming traditions that inform a lot of their cultural identities, but they're all clearly stemming from the same idea. One heart and one mind, indeed:
- The Wolfriders use two names, a personal name that derives from their forest home or a skill in their common language and a secret soul-name that derives from their inner selves. Their personal names can also change to reflect changes in the individual, perfectly fitting for the tribe descended from the shapeshifter who used her powers to adapt to the new world.
- The Sun Folk use names that derive from their environment in the elven language, but since their environment is different and the names mostly use a two-noun format, pretty much everything is named after rocks and the sun, because that's pretty much all their environment has.
- Ember and Suntop combine those traditions quite nicely.
- The Go-Backs use short, sharp, mostly one-or-two syllable names with hard consonants. We don't get a translation for many of their names because the meaning itself is eschewed. Go-Backs don't waste time on fancy things like picking out a Meaningful Name for their newborns.
- Which is also another sweet tidbit for Pike, whose name is both his chosen weapon and a single-syllable word with hard consonants. It's a perfect Go-Back name, fitting for his three-mating with Skot and Krim.
- The Gliders tend to have long, airy, soft-sounding names; Aroree, Winnowill, and Voll, perfectly suited to a culture that is both stagnating and lofty. Winnowill gets special mention for being a Meaningful Name on its own in English ("winnow" = to separate the wheat from the chaff, or remove the unfit items from a group in order to leave only the best, and "will" = the desire to act) but evidently a purely elven name. Voll's much shorter, simpler name even reflects his relative simplicity, compared to Winnowill and Aroree's .. uh, complicated emotional states.
- Voll even fits in with the Go-Back naming convention, which fits him perfectly since he pretty much rushes face-first into danger the second he gets it into his head to do so.
- Elfquest's focus on how Babies Make Everything Better is entirely understandable. They have a very tiny population and very long lifespans, but it's not just that babies make everything better, it's that for most of elven history, it's only way to meet a new person! It's exciting for them the same way it's exciting to meet a new neighbor or a transfer student. If you had to live with the same thirty people for 600 years (Leetah's lifetime, as of the start of the story) and growing to adulthood only takes about 20, the birth of a new baby means finally having someone new to talk to.
Fridge Logic:
- Two-Edge may never have figured it out on-screen, but the First Palace War did tell him who he was -someone with the potential to be the best of both races, buttressing each other's strengths and shielding each other's weaknesses. But, likely in part due to his madness at the time, he didn't see it that way. Which is where Venka was important -her mother constantly told her "differences make good sparks", that two different things can make something better. So she had the ability to see what Two-Edge couldn't -and was wise enough to know that just telling him wasn't enough.
