Five Race Naming Conventions and Marriage!

So there's a thread in General Discussion asking for the ability to change last names after completing the marriage quest, but it got me thinking... do the five races of Eorzea actually practice that custom? I started trying to guess through it for each race and I realize now it got a little out of hand and is longer than I meant it to be and I'd love some input! What do you guys think?

It's very unlikely either clan of Lalafell do, since both names for them are actually given names, and they're rarely even addressed by their "first" name alone. It'd be like "Jessica" marrying "Daniel" and changing her name to "Jessiel."

It's equally unlikely the Seekers of the Sun practice such a custom, mostly since they don't have anything resembling marriage in their society.

We have very little information on Keepers of the Moon relationships, so I don't have a guess either way with them.

While Sea Wolves MIGHT, the emphasis is obviously on parentage, since their last names are just <so-and-so's son/daughter>. In Iceland this is still practiced in full, with somebody named... Arianna Jonsdottir, for example, actually being the daughter of Jon. If she marries Rurik Einarsson she does NOT become Arianna Einarsson. So it's unlikely Sea Wolves do it.

The Hellsguard seem more like the Lalafell in that both parts of their name are equally relevant to their identity, and are thus equally unlikely to do it.

Since the Elezen follow French conventions I see no reason why they wouldn't -- provided there's no cross-clan marriage, I imagine that would be fairly taboo for them.

I feel it's unlikely Midlanders do since their names are based on their (not their father's) professions or can reflect their appearance. This implies that, while their names can change throughout their life, it more reflects an individual than an individual's spouse.

Highlanders don't seem overly likely to since they tend to adopt the nicknames they've earned in battle, implying they earn their names (though maybe not completely, I guess they might take married names).

TL;DR: Probably not for pretty much every race but the Elezen and maybe the Keeper Miqo'te.

I certainly got the vibe that name inheritence (and in some cases the procreation of the species) is dislocated from marriage in Eorzean culture.

I need to correct you on the keepers. Their matriachal society holds that the mother's name is inherited and, like with the Seekers, the societal structure would probably collapse if males were tied to monogomous relationships for the purposes of mating - their name is from their mother, not their wife.

The Elezen may be the interesting exception, but it is not clear how their names are inherited.

I seem to recall a Ferne post at some point explicitly stating that Lalafells don't inherit the name but I can't seem to locate it atm.

Otherwise I'm with you and Catapult for the others. It doesn't seem like name changing is part of the Eorzean culture, except perhaps with Elezen.

Also, just to be pedantic (:P), should be careful about matriarchal vs. matrilineal. One refers to power and authority structure (-archal), the other is how names are passed down (-lineal). For the Keepers, both are true, whereas the Seekers appear to be matriarchal but patrilineal (women hold power, father's name is passed down).

The only condition for Elezen surnames is that they aren't shared between the two clans. For all we know, Elezen could use the same overall structure as Hyur (chosen based on profession/appearance/character traits), but until we're given just a smidge more detail, we won't have much to go on for fully naming Elezen.

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Originally Posted by Catapult

I need to correct you on the keepers. Their matriachal society holds that the mother's name is inherited and, like with the Seekers, the societal structure would probably collapse if males were tied to monogomous relationships for the purposes of mating - their name is from their mother, not their wife.

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Your premise is sound, not sure about your conclusion. While their matrilineal (thanks Myranda! :P) society does mean that their names are inherited from their mothers, that's not unlike real world Western society where names are inherited from fathers (and ARE taken in marriage). We know the Keepers run in much smaller groups than Seekers, so it's actually not out the question that males would make monogamous pairings with specific females, even if males are comparatively rare. This would simply mean that many females go un-paired and would not be a setup completely alien to real world cultures over the course of history. Probably more relevant, this wouldn't be unlike Seeker culture where only certain males get to contribute to the gene pool (though instead with only some females contributing).

Plus, in real world examples, we rarely (never?) see polygynous relationships in matriarchal societies (or polyandrous ones in patriarchal societies, which we have many more examples of). Though I suppose it's only fair to note that humans have much closer to a 50:50 birth rate with the sexes, while Miqo'te birth so few males that polyandry would be impossible. I stand by what I said that we don't really have enough information to make a properly educated guess on the subject.

I might even go so far as to say that the fact that males inherit both their mother's first AND last names means they would be able to freely adopt the last name of their wife without breaking the hereditary line their name previously would've indicated (assuming they take a wife, of course).

All that said, I'm inclined to agree that it's unlikely they do change their names -- but it really is just a guess.