Hello everyone, and Happy New Year to you all. *smiles*

Now, I'll make this relatively short of a question, but will also explain myself. I must ask, for a Nord character, what sort of names should one use? Seeing as each human race has a real-life name-origin fit for each race (Imperials with Latin and Italian, Bretons with French, Redguards with Arabic, etc), what exactly would be the best choice in terms of finding names for a Nord. I know that clan names and titles are optional for Nords, but I have no idea where to look for when it comes to their names.

The reason I ask this is because, well..I came to a revelation. I find myself growing bored with standard, stereotypical race and class combinations, and wish to do something different. And for a Mage, I found myself ultimately looking towards the Nords for inspiration ( a race which, in truth, I looked away from for the longest time but now openly read lore on and try to open myself to ), especially with the lore I read concerning one of the most well-known of Mages...a Nord, at that...Shalidor - who was around before even Vanus Galerion. And on an semi-unrelated note - I also found myself interested in the idea of a male Orc rogue/thief.

If anyone could offer me assistance in regards to naming a Nord character, I would appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

There's a http://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Main_Page for real-life Nordic names, with many of the in-game Nord names able to be found on it, so most of them are probably lore-friendly. There's bound to be one fitting a mage.

Running through the lists of the named Nord NPC's of http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Morrowind-Nord and http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Oblivion-Nord would be a nice place to start to get how it rolls. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Nord_Names throughout the series which handily helps break down things like prefixes, suffixes, and hyphenated names.

On the topic of race niches (The different leanings the game gives specific races) is actually quite open. Nord's may not be big on magic anymore, but that's because them thar pointy eared elves ruined it for them. Ah, but Nordic magic is fine and dandy! An Orc could very easily turn to theivery given their pariah status, Altmer have their own warrior castes, and the Breton's of High Rock are diverse to the point where you could easily make any type of character-class and it'd still be quite reasonable for them. Playing around with different builds is always fun.