Unifying elves and humans

I'm having some trouble with classifying the various ethnic groups in my fantasy story. I want elves to be not a race separate from humans, but simply an ethnic group, thereby fitting them under the broad title of "human."

Generally, the only difference in my story between elves and humans is basic ear shape and some genetic mutation that allows for things like being quicker on their feet and having sharpened senses. There's no immortality, non-elvish humans are just as capable of magic if they work toward developing those skills, etc. The thing is, what word do I use to differentiate the elvish ethnic group from their round-eared counterparts, without eliminating the justification for calling my elves human? And am I bringing out Unfortunate Implications with this?

what about sapiento?

Just give them a fancy name like a bunch of gypsies and make them blend in with the rest of society. Make sure to have some people hate them, though, or it will be unrealistic. It's kinda hard to have a group of almost-superhumans blend without making a race of mary sues in your world. Rev up those unfortunate imlications because they're unavoidable. To have people see them as human, you could introduce them through an elderly one. I'd call them Fin'ah off the top of my head.

edited 15th Feb '12 1:10:50 PM by Timpani

If I understand it well, you can just call them elves all along. And from there you may go on race-relation-metaphor digressions, and discuss whether they themselves prefer to be called "longeared-Americans", or do not mind the old moniker "elves".

As for Unfortunate Implications: that would settle that old elves-are-Super-Aryans-and-it's-hidden-racism issue, the elves are all of the Caucasian type just as, say, the Zulu are of Negroid, deal with it. 'Course, I feel it's not really a settle, only a swap of one can of worms for another.

I wonder if the goons watch.

I pretty much ignore the significance of skin color here. There are light-skinned elves and dark-skinned elves, so...whatever. What I originally had planned was for them to just be called elves, and call all the round-eared individuals "human" for convenience's sake, and have some elves irked by this while others are apathetic to the whole issue.

As far as attitudes are concerned, I have certain people treating elves with hostility because they're stereotyped by preconceived notions of arrogance, but in reality my elves are no more or less arrogant or respectful/disrespectful of nature than anyone else. As far as personality is concerned, most of them aren't particularly self-righteous, either. I'm thinking of reinstating the angle I had before, where there's debate as to whether or not elves should be referred to as human.

The main problem I'm facing is, what do I use as a catch-all term for all of the ethnic groups, elves and round-eared people included? I like the sapiento angle, though. I was thinking of calling the round-eared humans either Aurots or Rotaurs, but since there's not really a parallel for Latin in my setting, I don't know.

Some of the positions of the elves would have been, "Calling us elves is okay, but don't object when we call ourselves human, either."

edited 15th Feb '12 1:45:34 PM by Lennik

One thing I'd like to emphasize: if you're going to give elves and non-elves different strengths and weaknesses, don't treat non-elves as the baseline. I consider this a failure of Winds Of The Forelands—it repeatedly portrays the Eandi as the human baseline, and the Qirsi as the baseline plus magical powers and minus a few points of CON. It seems logical that the Qirsi would think of themselves as the human baseline, thinking of the Eandi as the baseline minus magical powers plus a few points of CON, but this never comes up, and the Qirsi describe themselves as frail even to each other rather than describing the Eandi as hardy.

edited 15th Feb '12 10:13:41 PM by feotakahari

Make the humans physically stronger.

I'm starting to think that I should just eliminate the strengths and weaknesses in that regard, actually, but I'm not sure.

BTW is this "quicker on their feet" like the Kenyans, or in some metaphysical way?

Not sure I was thinking in either of those conditions. I just envisioned them as having a slightly greater running ability than that of non-elves, but in general this was described as greater "agility."

I don't think it's realistic call elves a human ethnic group. Humans fights over the smallest difference between ethnicitys so they would consider elves to even be human.

Also, it's unscientific to imply that elves and humans can breed together when they have significant differences in DNA.

The point is how big these differences are. Humans IRL are pretty diverse.