#the fact that i've come this far and dedicated this much time into fane is amazing

[emerald-amidst-gold]

So, I’m just laying here, casually eating a bagel and I can’t help but just think about Fane’s name. To be honest, Fane has had various names before I even decided on the one he has now. 

As a little treat, let me go down the list:

Ferox (I have no clue where it came from. I just thought it sounded cool. XD)

Faelyn (More elven, less random, but it still didn’t fit for me.)

Feron (Keeping with the ‘F’ trend at least, right?)

Feris (I guess I wanted to go to a carnival.)

Fayn (I was close with this one! Same pronunciation, but I didn’t like the spelling)

And then, as a happenstance, I was playing ‘Divinity: Original Sin 2′ and those who’ve played it know about the Eternal, Fane, right? That’s when it all clicked. That’s when I decided on Fane’s canon name. I just thought it was perfect, and now, here we are~

BUT THEN! I went further because Fane’s character went further beyond being just a Dalish elf or what I had originally planned, which was to make Fane a reincarnation of a sort. 

I was working on my original, original story called ‘Sanguine Promise’, and a lot of the terminology that I use has Latin roots. Obviously, it’s simplistic and I twist a few things to make them ‘fit’, but the core word is Latin. 

For example, I needed a name for a city, or rather, the entire faction of three in my story that lined the oceans of the republic. I started at the base and said, ‘Okay, let’s see what blue translates to.’ I searched and ‘blue’ translates to ‘caeruleum’ in Latin, and it was perfect! Why? Well, two reasons: this faction has those who harbor royalty in their blood, from the lowest peasant to the purest bred noble; they all bear royal blood. So, the ‘rule’ in word was just a happy coincidence, but I thought it was neat! Secondly, the name encompassed the blue of the sea as well as the intricately woven detail of royalty which is referred to as ‘blue bloods’ which in my original story is highly important. Hence, ‘Sanguine Promise’.

So, taking that into account, I played around with more words, created more locations, more ‘lore’, and then I came back to Fane, who was the main protag in this story of mine. As I said, blood was the determining theme, but mainly its hue. There are four types: red (obviously), blue, white, and finally, black. Three factions bear three of the four types of blood hue, and they range from what I’ve labeled as ‘Viscous’ and ‘Fluid’. The higher the viscosity of your blood, the higher you are in society. The more fluid your blood is, the lower you are in society. Each faction has a caste system, but each revile the fourth and rarest blood hue: black.  

My playing of words continued and I looked up the definition for ‘black’ in Latin which has multiple translations, but the one that caught my eye was ‘ater’ (ah-ter). I was like, ‘...Wait. WAIT.’ And I’m no linguist, so take what I do with a grain of salt, but I was like, “Fane has black blood. Ater means black, so if I add...ian to the end then..AH! YES!” And voila, Aterian was born because ‘ian’ means ‘belonging to’, so if I take ‘black’ and ‘belonging to’ and squish them together I have a rough, sloppy translation of a name that means, ‘One who belongs to black’ or, how I like to put it, ‘Blackened One’. 

I haven’t used Fane’s other name in my DA stories lately, and there’s a major reason for that. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I’ve changed some things that happen later in his story. ‘Fane’ is a name his father gave him, and I just recently pieced together a huge coincidence with that name and it has me shocked and pleased. Also, I realized a plot hole in that Solas wouldn’t possibly know Fane’s other name because they were unable to speak to each other, and that’s why I decided that the regarding term for Fane from Solas would be ‘ma’isenatha’ or ‘my dragon’ until the name was uncovered or given later on down the line. 

The translation for Fane’s other name still applies to Dragon Age verse though. It’s why I’m like jumping in my seat half the time and saying, ‘Just write a fucking Post-Trespasser AU! That’s where all your ideas come into play! We know what happens during Inquisition, but that’s also important! FUCK!’ And if you can’t tell, I’m very bad about keeping my mouth shut concerning my stories because I’m just excited and I like to share. XD

But! All in all, that’s the origins of Fane’s name or rather, names. Fane and Aterian. Two sides of a very, very complicated coin. >:3