Quote Originally Posted by Februs View Post
They aren't referred to as Eikons because those who used the term originally are no where to be found and the Garleans are from another country.
Which would be the case if the second conclusion I mentioned turns out to be the intended meaning from Unukalhai, or a meaning similar to it.


I also don't think there's that much evidence pointing to it being a cultural/geographical/language distinction - some, but not much. We have the modern use of it via the Garlean empire, and the Lore panel comment that describes it only as the name Allag used for the powerful summons without further clarification on those summons (so we don't have evidence for or against it including entities that share a fundamental basis yet differ in ways not seen yet that are removed enough from the exact process that involve Eorzean primals for them to be considered different than primals, at least not from the lore panel), and that's about it.

That Allag almost certainly didn't worship any gods and some of them actually sought godhood isn't actually terribly relevant to the Garleans using the word eikon in the exact same fashion. At most, with Garlean being the copy cat, it suggests they are at least partially correct, and that leaves room for the issue of eikons to go either way, for now.

And again, there's the apparent distinction being made by Unukalhai (the more I consider his sentence, the less I think it likely he's just referring to primals we have yet to meet):

"Ah, but I speak not of the primals, with which you are exceedingly well acquainted. It may interest you to know that the term “eikon” and the beings to which it refers precede the Garlean Empire by eras. You see, it is the name by which the Allagans called godlike beings, the Dark Divinity Odin among them."

If the difference between primal and eikon were a cultural/geographical/language distinction, why would he specifically call out that he's speaking "not of the primals" but rather something else, treating them as separate beings in those comments?

As a side note - that one part of the answer from the lore panel has certainly muddied the waters, as it seems to almost contradict what Unukalhai said.