The Vetti
The world distinguishes between the roshi — the animals of the world, wild or domesticated — and the Vetti, the sentient peoples, understood as the keepers of the roshi. The Vetti are eight peoples of several lineages, most of them with elven blood. A member's companion in the village is a Vetti (the sheet); the shopkeepers of the Hollow are Vetti too.
The register
The formal species names are Old Ljosalfian adaptations of each people's own name; the Ljosalfi are the dominant culture and their language is the world's lingua franca, so the common names are theirs. Formal name, common name, what they call themselves:
- Ljosalfi — high elves — Elf (High Elf beside the Dokalfi). The dominant culture; they chose "High Elf" themselves.
- Dokalfi — dark elves — Av (Tak Av beside the Ljosalfi). The Ljosalfi's sister species, parted some fifty thousand years ago; nocturnal, with pale purplish skin that is dark beside theirs.
- Trovi — orcs — Trov.
- Dverfi — dwarves — Dverf. Of the semi-elven, proto-Eastern-Elf line.
- Vatli — wood-folk — Vatal. Of the semi-elven, proto-Eastern-Elf line.
- Nissi — tinkers — Nix. Of the semi-elven, proto-Eastern-Elf line; "tinkers" is the High Elves' word.
- Lindri — lizard-folk — Linder.
- Kobbi — cat-folk — Kov.
Elves and semi-elves
An ancestral elven population gave the elf-proper species — the Ljosalfi and the Dokalfi — and the proto-Eastern-Elf branch: the Dverfi, the Vatli and the Nissi. Those three are elves to the scholars, but their bodies went their own way and the street does not call them "proper elves": semi-elves, in common usage, whatever the classification says. The record does not say how the three branched from one another, and it does not give the Lindri's or the Kobbi's lineage.
The names, three ways
A people's own name (Elf, Av, Trov, Dverf, Vatal, Nix, Linder, Kov); the formal name scholars gave it in the Ljosalfian register (Ljosalfi, Dokalfi, Trovi, Dverfi, Vatli, Nissi, Lindri, Kobbi — two of them, Vatli and Lindri, by a regular old sound change); and the common name everybody uses. Which one a speaker reaches for says something about the speaker.