So supposedly PELIN-EL means "star-made knight". That's a lot of meaning to fit in two syllables, which reminds me of the line in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "The other kids at school nicknamed him Ix, which in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as 'boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.'" EL in isolation means high or royal. If PELIN means knight, that would just give us high royal knight, but not star-made - unless EL actually means "star-made" and "high, royal" is just an idiomatic gloss on that. If the EL is a superfluous honorific, then PELIN by itself would have to encompass "star-made knight" all on its own, which is oddly specific, unless star-made knights were a common enough phenomenon to have a name on-hand. Since Pelinal was a myth-echo of Lorkhan responding to the myth-echo of Lorkhan's heart in the form of the CHIM-EL ADABAL, did the other elven towers have Pelinal anologues? Or were they exempt from that phenomenon due to copying Ada-mantia instead of Red Mountain?

Is that really a translation? Because his common name Pelinal supposedly comes from the Ayleid word for stranger.

:facepalm:

http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/songofpelinal.shtml

the most high and royal element for the Ayleids was light, it therefore makes sense that "start-made" translates to royal and glorious also. lots of real life words are like this.

Also, PELIN-EL appears to be Ehlnofex (in caps lock, similarity to other words). And Ehlnofex words rarely have direct translations AE CHIM CE ALTADOON and require descriptions more often than not. Pelinal is either derived from PELIN-EL or comes from Pellani, the Aldmeris word for stranger.

Or maybe it's a smattering of both.

It's derived from PELIN-EL.

Pellani is what the Ayleids call strangers after they became the Wild Elves.

PELIN-EL does sound Ayleid though. It must be the -EL at the end.

Actually I doubt that the word was made up when they went feral. The Wild Elves just references that Pellani means outsider but this is a word that could have always had that meaning. Especially considering 'star-made knight' seems out of place.

Think of a stereotypical lovecraft novel, everybody not from the remote village is called "OUTSIDER!". The word isn't new, but it is used more prominently.

Is Ehlnofex related to Aldmeris?
Nu-Mantia has some Ehlnofex that sounds like latin, and Imperial names sound like latin, in a language known as Cyrodiilic, which may have evolved from all the mixed peoples of the region.

Pfft.

And I'm not sure if the Wild Elves were pictured to be the Ayleids nowadays as they were first thought of. I just found the words sounding similarly neat.

When the name Pellinal was thought up and put on the time line along with Hans the Fox, I doubt he was envisioned as he is now either. It seems like repatriation of old material really.

The real reason is: it's a name, and it means whatever the guy who made it up says it means.

If you want an explanation: regardless of what language this "Pelin-El" stems from, "Star-Made Knight" rather than an exact translation, might be a transcription of a morphological structure that English does not have or cannot properly render.